


Sedatephobia

by Reyna_is_epic



Series: Kids Deserve Hugs [2]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Character Study, Childhood Trauma, F/F, Fall of Beacon (RWBY), First Crush, Freezerburn brotp, Friends supporting eachother, Friendship, Healing, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mental Health Issues, One-Sided Attraction, Panic Attacks, Phobias, Platonic Relationships, Pre-Volume 3 (RWBY), Protective Ruby, Ruby is surprisingly mature, Sedatephobia, Team Bonding, Team as Family, Weiss Schnee Character Study, Weiss Schnee Needs a Hug, Weiss Schnee-centric, awkward beans, everybody gets a chapter, fear of silence, like really heavy, mentioned past tauradonna, realistic depictions of trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2019-11-06 08:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17936318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reyna_is_epic/pseuds/Reyna_is_epic
Summary: She can barely breathe, barely move, petrified by the mere thought of it. Everything is moving so fast, and so vibrant, and so loud.It's loud, everything is loud because she can't hear anything except the sound of her own breathing, her own blinking, her own heart beating violently and jack-rabbit paced within her chest.It's deafening.She can't breathe.___This isn't a happy story





	1. Ruby

The first time that Jacques hit her it was her fault.

 

She would take the words to her grave: it had been her fault, no excuses, no questions asked.

 

She had been in the hallway outside his study, playing tag with Whitley, and she had been entirely too loud. She knew that she wasn’t supposed to be playing there. She knew that she wasn’t supposed to yell in the house. She knew that her father had a very important meeting that afternoon that could not be interrupted, and she’d run down that hallway with Whitley hot on her heels despite it.

 

The four sharp strikes she’d received were deserved, besides, the five that Whitley got for trying to argue were considerably worse.

 

Father didn’t like to make a habit of hitting them, children with bruises in public weren’t exactly a good sign and their pale alabaster skin would bruise easily. So though there were outbursts similar to that one over the course of her seventeen years of life, they were few and far between, save for circumstances in which she had truly messed up and was deserving of some sort of punishment.

 

It wasn’t exactly like Father could ground her, she never left the house anyway.

 

She could count the times that her father hit her on one hand, the time she’d run in the hallway when she was four, the time she’d somehow managed to rip her mother’s dress when she was six, the time she had a tantrum in front of one of her father’s business partners when she was seven, when she’d accidentally cracked her father’s scroll when she was eleven, and when she’d purposefully poured wine down the shirt of that stupid boy that her father had tried to set her up with when she was thirteen. 

 

Each time the strikes were quick, deliberate, and only given after a long proceeding argument between the two of them. Her father was not cruel, just strict, and he expected nothing less than her perfect behavior. If that occasionally presented itself in a stinging across her cheeks, she understood the reasoning behind it.

 

By the time that Weiss left for Beacon those days were long since past anyways, it had been five years since her father had raised anything more than his voice towards her and she considered herself perfectly capable of keeping a handle on her more childish impulses that had lead to her  beatings  punishments. She had nothing to fear from the man, at least nothing that she couldn’t handle.

 

Her subconscious, however, disagreed.

 

~

 

She can’t see, can’t move. It’s all just dark and quiet.

 

Endless blackness surrounding her on all sides, nothing to do, nothing to see, nothing to hear. It’s all just silent, and dark, and nothing.

 

She screams, squirms, lashes out with all her strength in whatever direction possible, but there’s nothing. Her vocal cords strain, but no sound comes out. She thrashes, and she can’t see her own body, can’t feel her limbs. There’s nothing.

 

Just darkness.

 

Just silence.

 

Weiss’s eyes snap open, and she sits bolt upright only to go toppling over as she overestimates the amount of space she has to her right side and ends up launching herself out of her bed and to the floor.

 

The cold tile floor that she just barely manages to catch herself on with her hands before she gives herself a concussion. She gasps harshly, letting out panicked breaths as she slowly manages to ground herself once again. She’s fine, she’s safe, at home, not trapped in the endless dark abyss wherever the hell that was.

 

She listens, quiet and careful, to her own breath as it echoes against the cool tile beneath her fingertips, watches as it begins to fog from the heat of her breath.

 

She’s done this song and dance before, she’s always had a bit of a habit of sleeping too close to the edge of the bed, and so falling to the tile floor isn’t exactly a surprise, but it still hurts like a bitch when she does. She just barely manages to convince herself to sit back up before she hears footsteps.

 

A strange combination of hope and fear come charging through Weiss’s head with little regard to the remains of whatever sleep she had managed to glean beforehand. When Weiss had been small, very small, back when Winter still lived in the house, she’d occasionally have nightmares that resulted in very similar bouts of crashing to the ground and large thumping noises in the middle of the night. Winter, whose own room had only been a few doors down from Weiss’s, would often come charging from her bed to make sure that poor little Weiss hadn’t managed to somehow hurt herself over the course of the night.

 

It had been a comfort, in those early years, to hear footsteps against carpet in the wee hours of the morning.

 

Now though, when those years had long since past, it brought confusion and more than a bit of fear.

 

The door burst open before she could put more thought into that and the silhouette that stood in it just further instilled the feeling that something was wrong.

 

It was a tall, wiry man with shoulders much too broad for his thin spindly legs and long almost claw-like fingers. The only light Weiss could see by was the moon, and his pale blue eyes shone like silver blades in the night.

 

“What the hell are you doing in here?!” His voice is wrong, distorted. She’d never thought of her father’s voice as anything other than stern, but at this moment just his voice feels like a million ants crawling beneath her skin.

 

“I-I was just-” her own voice sounds wrong, small and warbled. Like a child that knows it has been caught with its hand in the cookie jar.

 

He steps forwards, just a single stride, and suddenly he’s in front of her, reaching down with that clawed hand and wrapping it around her jaw, yanking her upwards by the chin. It  _ burns _ like she’s been grabbed by the devil rather than a man and when he speaks the words are hot and wet against her face, the bristles of his mustache itching against her brow.

 

“You were just,” he mocks, warbled and cartoonishly high, she feels so small, so insignificant in his hold, “just what? I have work to do, people to see, reports to write, I don’t have time for your childish little games! So shut up and go to sleep!”

 

He throws her, winds up his arm, and tosses her up and over her bed until she crashes against the opposite wall with enough force that she can feel the vertebrae in her spine crack. She gasps, sucking in cool, clean air, before sliding down to land on her back to watch through half-lidded eyes as her father closes the distance he created between them, suddenly slow and prowling, like a cat that has sighted its prey.

 

His feet make soft clicking noises as he closes in on her, before winding back an arm and landing a scathing, stinging blow across her left cheek, just centimeters beneath the scar on her eye.

 

“If you ever make me come in here again, to deal with your bullshit, I’ll do a lot worse,” he spits and Weiss’s insides squirm in revulsion. He winds back again.

 

~

 

Weiss shoots upright.

 

It’s silent, utterly and completely, silent.

 

She huffs, gasps, in and out, over and over and over as she attempts to unscramble the mess that is her brain.

 

It’s dark, but not as dark as  _ her _ room was, and her bed is noticeably less cold. 

 

She keeps huffing for breath, for some reason, it feels as if her heart is attempting to escape her chest, like each heaving motion can’t bring in enough oxygen for her lungs. She gasps and splays her hands across her chest in an attempt to feel the rising and falling and convince herself that she’s okay, that she’s all in one piece.

 

But she can’t hear anything else.

 

When Weiss first moved into Beacon, the first major revelation that had occurred to her was the utter absence of silence. She’d spent years holed up in a manor where she couldn’t hear anything more than the sound of her own heels clacking against tile, only occasionally marred by the sound of mumbled orders from her father or the manor staff rushing to fulfill one. Beacon was constantly filled with sound and movement. The sheer overwhelming nature of her first couple days had nearly sent her hiding in the library for even a shred of normalcy, only to quickly find that there was little respite in what was declared as ‘the premiere makeout spot’ for the majority of Beacon’s student population.

 

The dorm was no exception, during the day there was the constant bickering of sisters, Blake’s muttered complaints about the others lack of tact, Yang’s constant barrage of puns, and Ruby’s small little noises that still held no discernible meaning for Weiss no matter how long she spent trying to decipher them. During the night, it was host to Yang’s not-really-loud-but-not-quiet-enough-for-her-liking snoring and Blakes mumbles and occasional movements in her sleep that Weiss could only compare to a dog chasing a rabbit.

 

Weiss had long since grown used to such occurrences, she’d been living with them for two months already and would be for the next four years of her life, she had to be.

 

Now, however, all she can hear is her own strangled breaths and thundering heartbeat.

 

Weiss reaches out with a hand that shakes far too much for her liking and tugs at the fabric of their shared and stitched curtain, her fingers fumble against the fabric a few times before catching enough to pull it to the side and let in the beams of shattered moonlight.

 

White, silvery light splashes across the dorm’s wooden floors and stains the bunks opposing Weiss’s own, only to greet her with empty beds and pale glowing sheets that glare back at her without mercy.

 

The thumping in Weiss’s chest gets faster, she can hardly feel herself breathe anymore, but she continues to suck down cool oxygen despite it. Each breath feels more and more like her lungs won’t expand.

 

She can’t hear anything, just an endless, droning thumping combined with her own panicked gasps. There’s nothing, no one there, just empty blackness and herself. There’s no one there, no one there, no one there.

 

Weiss feels the floor give way beneath her, and her panicked gasps get louder, the ache in her chest rapidly expands like a water balloon about to burst. She can’t feel, can’t see, can’t hear, all that exists is her panicked breath and thundering heartbeat, rapidly growing to the point at which she’s sure she’s dying, having some sort of horrific heart attack at, god-knows-what-time, in the morning. 

 

She can’t breathe, her lungs are so full that she can feel her ribs creaking in protest, but she still can’t breathe, she can’t get enough oxygen, she can’t. She’s going to burst, she’s going to die, she’s going to-

 

“Weiss.”

 

The voice is so sudden, so unpredicted that Weiss smacks her head against the bed above hers, a loud thudding noise echoing from it, but that’s nothing in comparison to the thumping that ensues as she nearly goes tumbling from the bed into the wall. Something warm and steady that she can’t quite name as her panicked brain continues to try and get oxygen to it, wrap around her, steadying her from her fall and then bringing her into contact with something warm and solid that she vaguely recognizes as another human being.

 

Her skin crawls. 

 

Two warring parts of Weiss’s psyche come screaming out of their hiding places, pieces that she takes careful time and effort to hide away whenever she’s interacting with her team, but at this moment all rational thought has long since left the building. One of the parts, the one that remembers the stinging blows that were mostly warranted throughout her childhood and the stiff hands she’d been forced to hold as a small child as her father paraded her in front of members of his board, screams at her to get away. It tells her to recoil and make herself as small as possible. The other part, though, remembers the long days, weeks, sometimes even months where her only human interaction was with Klein when he wasn’t being ordered around to do something for someone else more important than a lonely little-teenage girl. It tells her to take any and every human interaction she can, to sink bonelessly into this person’s embrace and let herself be comforted by the fact that she’s not so sharp, not so cold as to warrant them recoiling away from her too.

 

In the end, it’s her panicked heartbeat that wins out, taking over her thoughts and drowning her back in the pounding that was her original cause for concern. She can’t move, can’t collapse or pull away, all she can do is sit there listening motionlessly as her heart attempts to make a mad escape from her chest.

 

“Weiss.” The voice speaks again, this time she thinks that she remembers it from somewhere, but the tone of it doesn’t quite spark a memory. Suddenly the gentle pressure against her back that was keeping her from falling begins to move, not away as originally suspected, but just move, steady simple movements against her shaking trembling spine as she sits there in a stranger’s arms and gasps for breath.

 

She’d find the image comical if she could muster the will power for it.

 

“Breathe,” The voice urges and if Weiss could scream she would.  _ What do you think I’m trying to do?! _

 

“Can you tell me what happened?” The hand on her spine moves up and down in practiced, simple movements. Weiss still can barely breathe.

 

“I-I” her voice is little more than a shaking trembling expel of choked breath. Her whole body shakes violently, as if physically refusing to let her speak. What if she dies here? Affixation in the middle of the night without even knowing what caused it in the first place.

 

“Shhhhh,” the voice urges, drawing the pressure that Weiss now recognizes as a hand across her shoulder blades, slim calloused fingers press against the fabric of her nightshirt and refuse to deviate from predetermined patterns that she would be hard pressed to name. “Breathe.”

 

Weiss’s breath comes out in what would be an indignant huff if it would just stop shaking so much.  _ Do you want me to answer your question or not? _

 

“I know,” the voice assures, though she seriously doubts it does, “You’re big tough Weiss Schnee and I’m embarrassing you, but you gotta calm down before you can lecture me.”

 

That gives Weiss pause.

 

“Ru--b-by?” her voice is still much too breathless to her liking, but the pattern being drawn against her spine and the brain power it took to simply put the voice into context are slowly drawing attention away from her thundering heartbeat.

 

“There you go.”

 

Up until this point Weiss’s vision has been confined to a darkness that, as it moves away, she realizes was caused by the person holding her’s pajama shirt. And as it does she’s given the sight of bright silver eyes glinting down at her in the shattered moonlight.

 

A flash from a half-forgotten dream rings through her head and her chest tightens again.

 

Ruby’s hands are there to catch her when she falls though, holding her steady as she trembles despite their own barely contained adrenaline.

 

“There’s my Weiss.” Ruby’s concerned frown, an expression that Weiss did not know she was capable of making, breaks into a fond smile that isn’t a far cry from the goofy one she wears at her sister’s teasing. 

 

If Weiss could, she would smack it off of her.

 

“Wha-where-” her breath is still only just coming back to her but, despite her protests, Ruby’s hands don’t leave her yet, continuing to draw patterns into her spine, slowly bringing familiarity as she recognizes the pattern as the small asterisk like stars that Ruby likes to doodle on the corners of her papers sometimes.

 

“You’re fine, you’re in the dorm,” Ruby assures, and the smile, despite its brilliance, does not change the tone of her voice. Ruby’s voice has never once struck her as what one might call soothing, it’s bright and loud and has all the subtlety of a particularly excited bell that’s being batted around by a cat. The voice she uses now, however, is like the bell has been replaced with the whisper of fabric being dragged across skin, quiet and smooth and, if she had to name it, probably something resembling silk, but not quite. Silk on skin is almost silent, this is smooth, but still holds the weight of movement, of small, almost microscopic, particles catching on individual arm hairs and hissing in protest as it continues in spite of them. 

 

It’s disorienting, but Weiss already feels like she’s come out of the other side of the looking glass. 

 

“I-wha-” her brain is muddled, just now realizing that hey, oxygen is a thing, and she’s taking it in like a normal functioning being, and not somehow drowning in open air. The realization is rattling and leaves her staring dumbfounded as the smile on Ruby’s face slides away to be replaced by the concerned frown that she’s not familiar with.

 

“You were freaking out pretty bad.” The hands on her back continue their ministrations despite the decrease in her heartbeat. She can still feel each pulse against her ribs, but they’re evening out, no longer a frantic need to escape. “Kicked my bed and nearly send me crashing to the floor.”

 

She means to say,  _ your fault for deciding suspending it on ropes was a good idea. _

 

What she actually says is, “Your fault.”

 

Ruby laughs, but it’s not the loud lighthearted giggle she’s gotten used to, it’s a deep throaty thing that sounds inches away from a sob, but never breaks like it.

 

“Glad to see you’re feeling better.” That grin flashes across her face, devilish in the moonlight, and sharper than Crescent Rose could ever hope to be.

 

The thing about Ruby that she can’t get over, no matter how much ‘team bonding’ and ‘best-friends outings’ she gets dragged through, is that she’s just so damn sharp, and she shouldn't be. Weiss trained, pushed, fought her way to the place she was by sheer willpower and skill alone. She proved to her father that she could handle her training, and paid her pound of flesh to do it.

 

Ruby, on the other hand, seems to get everything like a child on Christmas. Unwarranted and unearned. She got into Beacon _ , two years early, _ because she  _ just happened _ to be in a dust store getting robbed by an international criminal. She  _ just happened _ to have the best scythe wielder in the world on speed dial for all her life. She _ just happened _ to have met the headmaster of beacon before initiation and consequently get his favor in every disciplinary action ever handed to her. 

 

Weiss is skill, power, learning and growing and pushing herself to the breaking point and then beyond it until she collapses in on herself and picks up the pieces to start again.

 

Ruby is luck. Pure, unmarred, untouchable, unpredictable luck.

 

And it makes Weiss’s skin crawl.

 

That’s not to say that the girl is out of her league, or completely useless, quite the contrary actually. Weiss might like to drive the point home whenever her leader does mess up, but for the most part, the girl is just as competent as she, and that just makes her feel worse.

 

Weiss slowly remembers whose hands are the ones drawing stars against her shoulder blades.

 

“Well I am,” she hisses, hoping to get the point across and spare both of them the embarrassment. Of course, it’s Ruby, and so any sort of subtly goes straight over her head.

 

“Great!” She says brightly, squeezing Weiss tighter instead of releasing like she’d planned. She presses her face into her shoulder and those two warring sides of her brain, the ones that she squashed earlier as they fought over whether to fall into Ruby’s touch or run from it, shout in tandem. Her head is still spinning and she’s only just regained the ability to breathe, much less process the conflicting emotions in her brain.

 

“Y-you can let me go now…” it comes out much softer than her liking, and she’s not entirely sure that Ruby even heard it because she still doesn’t move for a moment. Then, in a motion that Weiss will never forget, she raises one of her hands and presses it into the hair on the back of her head, resting the fingers against her scalp.

 

“Your heart is still beating too hard,” her voice is softer than Weiss has ever heard it, and pressed against the top of her head so that she can feel it rattling the bones of her spine, sending shivers racing up and down it like someone playing the xylophone. Something warm lodges itself in Weiss’s chest and her tired, sleep-addled brain tells her to sink into this hold, let Ruby hold her together just a few minutes more.

 

The other side, the one that’s still screaming that her father is watching her every move, just waiting for a mistake, screeches for her to push her away. She is a Schnee, and the only person who should have to hold a Schnee together is herself.

 

Her hands rise and press against Ruby’s shoulders, ready to push her away, but just as her fingers make contact the ones in her hair begin to move.

 

Suddenly, there is no decision to be made.

 

 

She wakes up to the sound of hushed whispers and warmer than she’s ever felt in her life. Weiss, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t like the cold. In all honesty, she hates it, with a passion. She’s not particularly fond of heat either, but for whatever reason being stuck in a freezing cold room or outside during a snowstorm irks her just that much more than laying in the sweltering heat for ten hours. She’d rather turn into a bright red lobster than suffer one more blasting winter in her homeland, watching her fingers turn blue from the freezing blood in her veins.

 

“I dunno,” a voice says, soft, familiar, and close, but she’s not quite awake enough to place it. “Last night I woke up to her thrashing around and hyperventilating. I came down to check on her and she just kinda… refused to let me leave?”

 

“Wouldn’t have pegged snowflake for a cuddler,” another voice mutters, and just the sound of it is enough to make Weiss’s brows furrow, even without the willpower to recognize it.

 

“Really?” a third asks, “That’s all you have to say about that?”

 

“What?” the second complains, “What do you expect me to say?”

 

“I don’t know, maybe comment on the fact that she apparently had some kind of panic attack?”

 

“Blake, we’re huntresses in training, all of us have nightmares from time to time.”

 

“Not like that,” the first voice interrupts the bickering and vaguely Weiss is aware of some of the warmth leaving her side. She tries to voice her protest, but just ends up humming in a distinctly pouty manner. Nevertheless, the warmth returns and gently runs up and down the length of her arm. “It was  _ bad _ . Maybe even worse than after mom died.”

 

There’s a sharp intake of breath.

 

“What do you mean?” the third voice sounds both concerned and a little disbelieving.

 

“I mean she was completely catatonic,” the first explains, continuing their ministrations along Weiss’s arm. “She didn’t even recognize me until I’d been holding her for almost twenty minutes.”

 

“So the reason you’re cuddling Weiss-cream is because she had a panic attack in the middle of the night, you tried to calm her down, she basically koala-ed you, and then passed the fuck out?”

 

“Pretty much.”

 

“Are we going to stand around dissecting Weiss’s chosen coping tactics, or are we going to get breakfast?” the third voice breaks in, and she can hear the risen brow in it.

 

“Uh… well, one problem,” the first says and the warmth around Weiss shakes a little. She tightens her hold in response, unwilling to be left in the cold just yet. “I don’t think I can get out.”

 

For a moment everything is silent.

 

Then the second voice starts laughing.

 

“Oh, this is gonna be  _ excellent _ blackmail material!”

 

“Put the phone down Yang.”

 

“Aw c’mon Blakey, I just wanna show the world how cute and snuggly our little snowflake really is!”

 

“She’ll kill you if she ever hears you call her that-”

 

“What, a cute little cuddlebug who decides that motorboating my sister is an acceptable wooing strategy?”

 

“-and I’ll feel absolutely no remorse.”

 

“Can you two cut it out, you’re gonna wake her up!” 

 

“Rubes we’ve been bickering for like thirty minutes and she hasn’t reacted at all, that girl sleeps like the dead.”

 

“I’ll tell you who is gonna sleep like the dead!” a fourth voice breaks the conversation and a wide, goofy grin spreads across Yang’s features.

 

“Well good mornin’ to you too, sleeping beauty!”

 

“YOU HAVE THREE SECONDS, YANG XIAO LONG!”

 

“Gotta blast!”


	2. Yang I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Weiss...” Yang’s voice doesn’t sound convinced, but before she can begin interrogating her she thrusts her card into the barista’s hands, effectively cutting her off as Ruby begins loud protests about her paying.
> 
> Yang’s gaze remains cemented onto her, though. She can tell that this conversation isn’t over, even if she wants it to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone say thank you to Silver for giving me the wonderful chance to work with her. Thanks for everything pal, and here's to many more! -M

Weiss all but forgets about the incident, much to her teammates’ chagrin. Intellectually, she recognizes that whatever happened that night isn’t something to be written off like a bout of sickness or a muscle spasm. It’s something she should probably be looking into, and possibly be a bit more concerned about than simply acknowledging it and then pretending it didn’t happen.

 

_On the other hand…_

 

“Weiss it’s snowing!” Ruby turns to look at her with her brightest, widest, most giddy grin and Weiss can physically feel all of her insides liquify and rush towards her toes, a warm and heavy feeling left in its place.

 

_There’s that._

 

It wasn’t as if it had never occurred to Weiss that Ruby was… cute. Hell, the word was practically synonymous with the girl; she wouldn’t be surprised if she found a picture of her sitting next to the word in the dictionary. ( _Cute (n) a small girl by the name of Ruby Rose with silver eyes the size of dinner plates and a smile that could melt glaciers.)_

 

The problem was that, though Weiss had been aware of the fact, she hadn’t paid any particular attention to it. So what? Her team leader was cute; so were puppies. However, whatever had happened that night, it brought on one terrible realization.

 

Ruby was not just _cute._

 

Not cute like puppies are cute, or kittens are cute. Not even cute in the way that abnormally small versions of regular objects are cute.

 

Ruby was cute in the way that her nose scrunched up whenever she was trying to solve a hard math problem. Ruby was cute in the way that she stuck her tongue out while she was writing essays, deeply engrossed in her work so that she didn’t even notice until she sucked it back in later only to make a face upon the bitter taste. Ruby was cute in the way that when she got excited she bounced up and down on the balls of her feet and wiggled just slightly from side to side, making quiet little squeaking noises that reminded Weiss of a mouse who’d spotted some cheese.

 

Ruby was cute in a way that Weiss couldn’t ignore.

 

“I noticed,” she replies, pretending to be too engrossed in her textbook to care. They’d returned from their sparring session early, Ruby had managed to twist her ankle badly enough that she couldn’t continue the practice session, and Weiss had practically forced herself to peel her eyes away from her currently moping teammate (in _her_ bed as Ruby’s was too high to reach in her current state) and instead focus on the chapter of Grimm Anatomy that was due at the end of the week.

 

It had not been a very productive hour.

 

“C’mon! Let’s go outside! I bet I can make a snowman faster than you!” Ruby springs to her feet only to remember her handicap too late and go crashing back to the floor, a loud yelp following her down. Weiss suppresses a heavy sigh.

  

“Your ankle?” Weiss offers, only to receive a pout for her trouble and more heat building up in her chest. She presses her teeth against the back of her bottom lip. “Besides, shouldn’t you be working on your essay for Oobleck?”

 

Ruby’s pout turns sadder and the silver in her eyes shrinks in order to accommodate the increased volume of her pupils. How she manages to do that on command, Weiss will never know.

  

“But snoooooooooooOOOOOOoooOoOOoow…” she whines, and Weiss’s teeth dig into her lip, just slightly. No, the corners of her mouth are _not_ lifting.

 

“There’ll be more snow later.” At her words, Ruby flops dramatically against the floor, hands thrown over her eyes in mock horror.

 

“The cruel Ice Queen, she depriveth me joy!” she shrieks. Weiss can’t contain the warmth threatening to burn a hole through her chest anymore and it escapes her in a laugh, a stupid little laugh that makes her feel ridiculous, but she can’t find the energy to care when it causes Ruby to smile like she just won the jackpot.

 

“Are you always this dramatic and I failed to notice?” she asks through her giggles, _giggles._

 

“Maybe I’ve just been spending too much time with Yang,” Her shrug lifts her shoulders as the door bursts open and two snow-covered creatures fumble through. Blake looks like… well, like a wet cat… her ribbon is plastered to her skull in a wet, partially frozen, clump that melds into the dark hair that hangs around her face. She looks like a curtain that recently underwent a hurricane. Next to her, Yang is grinning like a maniac and letting off sparks as her hair attempts to catch fire but is hindered by the amount of ice currently in it, sending it standing straight up and giving her already impressive height an extra half-foot or so.

 

“It’s snowing!” she declares with pride, only to receive a glare from Blake beside her.

 

“Maybe Yang’s just been spending too much time with you,” Weiss counters, and Ruby lets out a slight snicker from her position on the floor.

 

“What are you two doing here anyway?” Blake shoulders her partner aside and heads straight for the bathroom. She leaves the door ajar however, a sign that she intends to be answered.

 

“Ankle,” Ruby holds the appendage aloft in the air, nearly kicking Weiss in the face for her trouble. She grabs the offending limb and holds it a respectable distance from her face.

 

“She sprained it,” she clarifies.

 

“Dang.” Yang plunks down in Blake’s bed, not even bothering to change out of her soaked clothing, and kicks Ruby lightly in the stomach. The younger girl lets out a startled exhale and retracts her foot from Weiss’s grip, scooting away from her sister to hide behind Weiss’s crossed legs. “And I was going to offer to take you to Lindo’s; they’ve got their seasonal drinks in~”

 

Ruby springs up, leg injury all but forgotten, and begins dancing around on her good foot. “It’s just a twist, I’ll be fine in like a day, c’mon Yang it’s a short walk, I’ll be fine. Canwegocanwepleasego, pleeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaase!”

 

Weiss can’t even attempt to follow that line of speech and Yang chuckles, back on her feet and shucking Ruby’s cloak in her direction before she can remind them that it’s currently 6 in the afternoon and curfew is at 6:30.

 

“Get your shoes on little miss, I’ve got coffee calling my name!”

 

Ruby howls in joy and begins tugging on her boots.

 

“I don’t think-” Weiss starts, only for Blake to poke her head out of the bathroom and shoot Yang a look.

 

“What did we talk about on the way over here?”

 

Yang blinks and slowly cocks her head to the side; the image of a confused Zwei comes to mind.

 

Blake lets out a loud drawn out exhale that Weiss wouldn’t necessarily call a sigh, it’s closer to a scream. “Curfew is in less than an hour, and we can’t exactly afford any more detentions, _Yang._ ”

 

A sheepish grin suddenly spreads across the girl’s face. “Oops?”

 

Weiss feels the corners of her mouth turn downwards. “What did you do now?”

 

“Nothing!” Yang exclaims as Blake finally leaves the restroom, hair tied up in a towel and stripped down to her undershirt and a set of black shorts. She walks towards Yang, and calmly shoves her over.

 

“ _Someone_ managed to blow a hole in the sparring room wall.”

  

“Hey, you were the one who startled me-!”

 

“You scared me first, I was only giving you a taste of your own medicine.”

 

“Well-” Yang seems at a loss for comebacks, her face screws up in an expression most would describe as pained, before she burst forth a weak, “your face is stupid!”

 

Blake rolls her eyes, a good-natured glance is sent Weiss’s way, only to immediately retract on realizing just what she’d done.

 

Weiss doesn’t hate Blake, especially not for something as superficial as the fact she had an extra set of ears that happened to be a bit fluffy. However, after the whole… White Fang debacle things were still awkward between them. Which was to be expected as Blake had lied to them, all of them, for months; and Weiss wasn’t above admitting that some of the things she had said during their preceding argument were… uncalled for. (More than a few were direct quotations from her father which she was hard-pressed to admit.)

 

So yeah, things were still awkward, and apparently, that extended to the exasperated looks they used to share over the tops of their boisterous partners’ heads.

 

“Look, my point is that you are not going anywhere,” The cat faunus coolly shoves her partner off of her bed before settling herself down upon it and fishing a book from her shelf. “Not without a chaperone at least.”

 

Yang, from the floor, pouts up at her partner. Blake, however, ignores her, gaze firmly affixed on the novel clutched in her hands, the small smug grin in place behind it safely hidden from Yang’s imploring gaze. Upon getting no sympathy from her, Yang immediately turns the look on Weiss, which would be fine; Weiss has gotten good at ignoring the puppy eyes of her teammates over the past couple months, until Ruby looks up from her position against the bedpost with the same pouting expression.

 

_Shit._

 

“No, no way, I’m not babysitting you two.”

 

“Weiss, pwease?” Yang settles her hands against her chest, clasping them beneath her chin. Ruby quickly follows her sister’s example.

 

“Weiiiiiiiss.” Those damn puppy eyes.

 

“Blake?” she tries, hoping that the dark-haired girl will see reason and help her out of this. Unfortunately, Blake’s gaze remains firmly affixed to the book in her lap.

 

Both Ruby and Yang continue their onslaught.

 

“Alright, Alright!” she shouts, raising her hands in defeat. Both sisters cheer, springing to their feet and enclosing Weiss in a hug before she can begin to voice her protest.

 

“Blake-help!” she shrieks before being swallowed by the bodies of two overly excited siblings, crushed between them with no sight of day. Blake calmly, and deliberately, turns a page of her book.

 

“Bring me back an earl grey.”

 

~~~ 

 

The city of Vale is so different than Atlas.

 

Atlas is… in all honesty, Weiss isn’t entirely sure. She’s been through the city of course, but the visits were always either hurried or while she was sat in the back of a limousine, staring straight ahead and trying to ignore the curious gazes of onlooking Atlesians. She’s been in the richer, nicer parts of town, escorted by security guards of at least two deep on all sides, but she’s never really seen the city proper. Not from anything less than the high-rises of some of her father’s company buildings.

 

Vale though, she’s in the thick of it.

 

Vale is bright colors and loud street performers weaving through crowds of people that rush from one packed building to the next. It’s laughing teenagers on the corner, and huddles of homeless people pressed near a sewer grate, trying to warm their shaking hands.

 

Vale is close, it’s bright, it’s personal, breathing down her neck and grabbing her by the wrist every possible second and dragging her along.

 

It’s Ruby.

 

Weiss doesn’t really know if that realization should be as comforting as it is.

 

The sisters are right in their element, even if Weiss feels like a fish drowning in air; they weave through crowds with the skill of someone who has been doing it all their life and, for every step that Weiss falters, there’s one of them there to pull her along. People push, men yell angry words at being deterred on their paths, women cry out apologies matched word for word with passive-aggressive remarks, yet through it all Yang and Ruby press on. Little more than a bowed head or hurried apology to get their way.

 

In less time than Weiss can count they’re standing in the entryway to a small, quaint little shop. Warm bodies pressing in on her from all directions are suddenly void to the cool, scented air of a coffee shop in late winter. Underfoot a carpet glitters with the last remaining crystals of snow that used to be attached to patrons’ boots and above hangs an array of knick-knacks and trinkets that Weiss wouldn’t be able to name if you gave her a dictionary.

 

And, just like all other things in life, the sisters hardly spare any of it a glance before they’re pulling her by the wrist to the counter, shouting at the poor young man behind it who looks like he was about to fall asleep. The sudden onslaught makes him look ready to sink beneath the counter and not come out again until his shift is over. If Weiss were not desensitized to the sisters at this point she might consider joining him.

 

“I’ll have a Quad Grande, non-fat, extra hot caramel macchiato, upside down,” Yang spits out in less than a breath and Ruby follows suit:

 

“Large vanilla latte with extra foam and five sugars!”

 

The young man turns a final panicked gaze on Weiss, having turned whiter than a sheet of paper, and Weiss can feel every fiber of her heart go out to the poor guy.

 

“Coffee. Black.”

 

“Weeeeeiiiiiss!” Ruby whines, turning on her heel to shoot her a glare that should probably be a lot more intimidating coming from her team leader than it is. “We’re supposed to be getting seasonal drinks!”

 

Weiss blinks, unsure what that means.

 

“Cold… coffee?” she confusedly orders. Both Yang and Ruby stare at her like she’s grown a second head.

 

“Hullo, seasonal? Like, Yuletide cheer?” Yang volunteers. Weiss blinks, confused.

 

“Yule… what?”

 

“You… don’t know what Yulemas is, do you?” Yang asks, and Weiss vaguely recalls illustrations in old textbooks of the feasts that the people of Remnant celebrated once, when they were much younger and looking for solace in the dead of winter; when all that grew died and they were left to starve between rare meals.

 

It never occurred to her that those celebrations might’ve still been carried over. Suddenly a good portion of her father’s absences in the later winter months made sense. It must’ve still been celebrated in other parts of Remnant and forgotten by Atlas. It made sense, Atlas was the youngest kingdom, they were bound to shake some of the older traditions.

 

Of course, it wasn’t like she could explain that to her teammates, they’d make a big deal out of it when there didn’t have to be one.

 

So, she swallows her tongue.

 

“Yulemas, of course, I’m afraid finals has my brain a bit fried!” she makes a loose gesture towards the sisters, “Besides, I prefer my coffee black anyway.”

 

“Weiss...” Yang’s voice doesn’t sound convinced, but before she can begin interrogating her she thrusts her card into the barista’s hands, effectively cutting her off as Ruby begins loud protests about her paying.

 

Yang’s gaze remains cemented onto her, though. She can tell that this conversation isn’t over, even if she wants it to be.

 

~ 

  /

 

It’s cold.

 

So so cold.

 

Freezing.

 

Weiss’s eyes open, slow and jerkily like an automaton being forced to move after years without maintenance, but once they do she’s greeted with the old empty fireplace of her father’s study.

 

When she was younger, much younger, perhaps around three or four, her grandfather would read to her beside the fire, his old blue eyes twinkling at her from behind half-moon spectacles as he flipped the pages of a book with words in a language that she just barely understood. It was the same language that Mother sang her to sleep in and that Winter would use to encourage her laughter when they played in the garden downstairs.

 

It was the same language that Father would crinkle his nose upon hearing and immediately yell at her to speak properly.

 

“That tongue is for workers,” he’d hiss, “speak it again and I’ll give yours to them so that it might be of some use to someone.”

 

So Opa spoke it.

 

Mutti spoke it.

 

Winter spoke it.

 

But Weiss bit her tongue. She never learned how to rake her tongue across her teeth in that pattern, never learned how to growl in that strangely soft way that her mother would as she whispered words in a language that felt more like home than the cold walls of that building would ever feel.

 

Instead, Weiss learned to tap the tip of her tongue across her teeth in a way that would make her father nod with approval and her mother smile with a tinge of sorrow that she never truly understood.

 

Opa died when Weiss was five.

 

She never heard a breath of the language again.

 

There’s nothing in the fireplace and that’s how she knows that she’s not in the days of old. Her grandfather always made sure the fire was blazing before he’d begin his tales, words that she somehow understood without being able to replicate.

 

“Kleine!” he’d declare, proud and fond and warm in all the ways her father was not.

 

 _‘Little one!’_ she knew he said, and she’d giggle as he scooped her up in his large, worn hands, settling her onto his lap as he smiled.

 

She loved that old man.

 

And once he was gone, the warmth had left with him.

 

Father’s study is freezing, and she vaguely wonders what she’s doing here. She never went into Father’s study unless summoned and she’d most certainly never fall asleep inside it. Not once Opa had died.

 

Slowly, as to not startle someone if she were not alone in the room, she raises her head and twists it from side to side, searching for some sort of clue.

 

The room is empty, still far too big, bigger than any office really needs to be. When it belonged to her grandfather she found the idea quite charming because Opa constantly complained about the fact himself. Once her father took it though, she felt that it just served to highlight the lack of warmth in the once comforting room.

 

However, barely four feet away, in the old armchair that faces the empty fireplace, sits a figure wrapped in blankets, far too thick and far too shapely to be pillows.

 

Confused, Weiss sits up.

 

 _Hello?_ she means to ask, but when she opens her mouth, no sound comes out.

 

Air flows past moving lips, her vocal chords strain, but nothing. Her tongue trips clumsily along consonants that won't form and vowels that aren’t hers to give. She finds her voice gone and in its place a chill that seems to be settling around her with each passing moment.

 

The blankets don’t move, there’s no fire to crackle, the air is still and heavy on her skin.

 

Cold.

 

Silent.

 

Weiss draws in a breath, reveling in the sound it makes and concentrating on it with all her might. Okay, plan B.

 

Her legs wobble beneath her, but she pushes to her feet, trusting limbs that feel loose and jelly-like as she makes her way towards the pile. She’s not sure why, but she knows that whatever is under there holds answers to questions she hasn’t even thought to ask yet.

 

The distance seems infinite. It’s barely four feet, but each step takes a lifetime, each movement feels as if she’s pushing through molasses. Life hurts, her body aches and groans with each and every breath. But all is still. All is silent. Her voice won’t work and the only sound she hears are her footsteps and labored breaths.

 

Small, cold fingers curl beneath the edge of the blanket, and with all her strength, she throws it away.

 

  \

  

She jerks awake, whacking her knee against the desk and jolting her chair back so fast she barely has time to cry out in panic before she’s dumped backward onto the floor, a tremendous crash following her down.

 

Not the best wake up call in the world.

 

She lays there, for god knows how long, trying to process exactly where she is and what the hell just happened.

 

All around her papers flutter like leaves, landing on her unmoving arms while she draws in breath after breath and groans at the dull thumping the back of her skull makes in response to the sharp one she received upon her fall.

 

_Stupid desk chairs are about as stable as a house of cards._

 

“Dust…” she manages to grumble before slowly extracting herself from her pile of notes and fallen chair.

 

Afternoons, once Class has ended, usually see team RWBY scattering to the wind, or at the very least breaking off into pairs. Ruby almost always wants to go out and do something physical and, while it is annoying to do classwork when someone is bouncing up and down in the seat next to you, she can hardly fault the girl for getting a little cabin fever. Even she has days when the last thing she wants to do is look at another textbook.

 

Yang, more often than not, joins her sister in her after-class-escapades, and when she doesn’t she’s following after Blake, usually with the other girl’s books in her arms and a bright grin that Weiss could see from space. If that girl doesn’t do something soon she’s sure she’s going to explode from sheer gayness.

 

Blake usually goes to the library or their shared dorm, whichever is quieter, and buries her nose in the closest book. Again, Weiss can hardly blame her from wanting to retreat from their louder classmates after being forced into their presence for the last five-plus hours.

 

Weiss? It’s honestly a toss-up where she ends up. She would prefer to follow Blake, and whenever she can she does, but more often than not Ruby grabs her by the wrist and tugs her along into whatever activity she’s managed to cook up this time, and in recent days… well, her and Blake alone in a room feels a little too close to suffocating for her liking.

 

Today, however, Ruby was out the door before she could even bat an eye and Yang was tagging along behind Blake as they made their way towards the campus library, leaving Weiss to try and figure out where the hell she was supposed to go.

 

So, alone in the dorm, trying to finish her Essay for Oobleck before anyone else in the class had even started, she’d apparently fallen asleep at some point between the introduction and… whatever that mess of a body that was.

 

“Damn it.” Now she has to start over, fantastic.

 

The dorm room is eerily quiet, something that Weiss had never tried to associate with the dorm since… well since she had her little meltdown.

 

“Battle of Grift-lodge.” She shakes her head. That doesn’t matter right now; what matters is that whatever impromptu nap she took, she’s lost all that time to the realm of dreams, and who knows what havoc her teammates are going to wreck once they return from their respective engagements. She has to get this done now or she might not get another chance until tomorrow, and she hates leaving things only half-way done. Part of her physically rejects the notion.

 

“Battle of Grift-lodge,” she repeats. Her voice sounds strange in the empty dorm room, not really echoing because that would require the presence of blankets and other cloth items to be void and Ruby likes to sleep in a little cocoon of her own making, so their dorm has more blankets in it than all the other freshmen dorms combined. No, her voice sounds… hollow. Empty. Like all the life has been sucked out of it.

 

She swallows.

 

“Grift-lodge.”

 

The battle of Grift-lodge was one of the turning points in the Great War, or really the war in Solitas. It was the last big battle that saw the fall of Mantle and rise of Atlas and even today you can see the scars it’s left on the land surrounding both cities. She specifically chose it for this assignment because she’s seen the aftermath herself, it’s the one she’s the most familiar with.

 

But in her voice, her hollow, stilted voice it sounds foreign. Choppy, uncomfortable and unwarranted.

 

The room is silent, empty, there’s no sound, no heartbeat, not even her breathing. Just that empty static sound that is produced when your ears have nothing else to latch onto. 

 

“Grift-lodge,” she repeats the phrase like it’ll somehow save her. Stop the empty flowing sound that is starting to close in on her on all sides, but her voice is hollow and her tongue clicks awkward and heavy inside her own mouth. She drags it across her teeth, hoping the points will bring her back to a semblance of reality and not this strange purgatory she’s seemingly trapped herself inside.

 

But she only remembers the tip-tapping of the edge of her tongue as she struggled to match the consonants of the words ~~her Grandfather~~ Opa would read to her over the edge of her head. She remembers his voice, old and weathered to show it, but warm in all the ways that she could never hope to mimic, how it clicked across each individual syllable with a lightness that she’d never heard another soul in Atlas come close to replicating.

 

She feels the cold of the room, the empty hollow sound of her own breath and the coldness in her own voice.

 

She swallows.

 

 _What the hell is wrong with you?_ She wants to question herself, but as she draws in the breath to speak she finds that her throat has closed, that she can’t force it to move enough to produce the sound necessary for a word, and instead lets out a strangled puff of air, escaping lips that are moving without the pitch to turn the movement to more than wasted energy.

 

She pulls back in her breath, sharp and deep and louder than it should be. Why is her breathing so loud? Why can she hear every time she moves in her chair, every breath she takes, every time she _blinks_ , and nothing else? What the hell?

 

 _Fuck_ , the word comes unbidden and unstoppable to her mind, but she doesn’t have the clarity to even begin to question the absurdity of the fact that she’s been trained all her life to be proper and polite, but the moment she’s reduced to animal instincts it’s _that_ word that comes to mind. She’d honestly find it a bit amusing if she could breathe deeply enough to produce a laugh.

 

But she can’t. She tries to take in oxygen, to at least have her own breathing to focus on, but the closed axis of her throat refuses to budge, and she finds herself choking on air and trembling like a scared leaf in the wind.

 

She swallows.

 

Her throat won’t move.

 

Her lungs ache with the need for oxygen, but she can’t force it, she can’t breathe, she can’t move, can’t think. It hurts, everything hurts, she feels like her entire world has converged onto one point, narrowing until it’s just her and her stupid _fucking_ throat that won’t move enough to let her breathe.

 

Her cheeks feel wet.

 

“Weiss?”

 

She whips her head upwards, but the movement is so sudden and she’s still lacking oxygen, she can barely make out a blur of gold before she’s lost her balance and fallen to the floor.

 

“Weiss!” the intruder shouts. Weiss can’t move, can barely feel the hard, wooden floor beneath her figure. All she can focus on is the strange echoing sound surrounding her, like she’s been paused while the rest of the universe has been put on fast forward. Hands grab her by the shoulders, but her body feels like lead with all the coordination of a wet noodle, and so her limbs won’t cooperate to push the person away. Instead, she finds herself propped up against a flat surface as a voice echoes indecipherably around her.

 

It’s not a sound that’s unfamiliar to her, in fact, she’s certain if she could just get her brain to shut up for two seconds she would be able to recognize it, but she can’t and so it remains a mystery. A warm call from a distant speaker as she drowns in her own shaking, distant mind. The world is gone, all she can feel is her throat, tight and all-encompassing. Her voice has long left her and that of the intruder’s isn’t the life preserver she so desperately needs.

 

_She needs to breathe._

 

That’s suddenly the only thought her brain can produce.

 

She needs to breathe.

 

_Now._

 

But Her throat is so tight, and her head hurts. Her lungs _burn_ with need and desperation leaves her clawing at her own throat to let her, but she’s not entirely sure if the motion is literal or imagined at this point.

 

She can feel her nails digging into her own flesh, pulling away skin and sinew to make way for the cool oxygen she so desperately needs. She can feel the blood running down her fingers, staining her skin like…

 

_Like blood on snow._

 

Funny, that that’s where her mind goes.

 

Images of Opa’s scarf, bright bloody red, against his alabaster skin come to her mind, followed by the image of blood running down white fingertips. How many lives have her father’s exploits claimed? How much blood runs over her hands, her feet, through her veins? What has her father turned her into without her ever stopping to question it?

 

“Weiss, I need you to breathe!” The voice shouts, almost directly in her ear, and, though it feels like she’s fighting a battle that she barely manages to win by the skin of her teeth, she pries her eyes open to glare at the speaker.

 

She finds her vision compromised, a blur of tears that have yet to shed and instead mar her vision into color-filled stains; a kaleidoscope that’s as beautiful as it is meaningless. She can’t glean anything other than gold and shadow. There’s someone’s warm breath on her face and for some reason she feels like her skin is ice, melting under the contact.

 

She feels sick.

 

“Come on Weiss, you gotta breathe,” the voice says again, no longer shouting, apparently the sight of her eyes is enough to quell that particular action, but their breath is still in her face, far too close and far too warm for her liking.

 

Her stomach is roiling, like it’s going to explode from the inside and tear her gut apart.

 

Her throat aches so much, but she can feel the passage of air through it, even if it still feels like her lungs won’t expand. They’ve been set on fire and are ripe to scorch her from the inside. If she tries hard enough she wonders if she could produce smoke from her mouth.

 

“Here, I’ll do it with you, will that help?” the voice questions and Weiss partially wants to tell them to shut up, but her throat still won’t let her produce sound.

 

The hands on her shoulders squeeze a little tighter, drawing her attention from that specific spot on what she assumes is the wall. She tries to focus her gaze on the person; she still can’t see anything other than muted gold.

 

“Can I pick you up?”

 

Weiss blinks.

 

“Just nod, that’s all I need.”

 

Surprising perhaps herself most of all, she does. It’s little more than a jiggle of her head, barely a millimeter of dipped chin, but the speaker takes it.

 

She finds herself scooped up into arms a thousand times stronger than she feels in this instant. She finds her back pressed to their front and she can feel each beat of her holder’s heart, strong and steady through her entire body. It seems to radiate outwards, causing Weiss’s trembling limbs to, just for a moment, still. Then they start to shake again, and stop, then shake, then stop. Like clockwork, following the beating of the heart.

 

Their arms still hold her, steady and unwavering and, distantly, Weiss thinks she might recognize the holder based purely on that, but the thought is gone before she can even fully think it, snatched away in a stream of consciousness that feels more like a riptide than anything else.

 

“Hey, it’s okay, you’re okay.” the voice is so different from this angle, and Weiss doesn’t entirely know why. Maybe it’s because the voice is no longer just in her face, but instead, each word seems to vibrate through her entire body; along each neural pathway and down into her bones, trembling along with her fingers and soothing in a similar way to…

 

To Ruby’s fingers dancing along her spine.

 

_Is that what this is?_

 

She’s panicking again.

 

For some reason that realization makes everything feel worse.

 

She shouldn’t feel like this, shouldn’t be doing this, panicking again and over what? Being alone in the damn dorm room, the same one she’s been inside a thousand times? She’s been alone before, spent the vast majority of her childhood in isolation and she’s never reacted like this before, so why does she feel like the very thought is causing her lungs to physically eject themselves from her body.

 

She tugs in a breath and nearly chokes on it.

 

“Woah there, too fast, you need to take it slow-”

 

Weiss’s throat widens to let her cough up her own insides and she growls out what might’ve been a retort but sounds more like a gurgled whimper.

 

“I know, but trust me, you gotta breathe. Here, I’ll do it and you can follow me, okay?”

 

Weiss doesn’t know. All she knows is that her body feels like it’s glass about to shatter, cloth being pulled so taught it’s about to come apart at the seams.

 

“Just nod Weiss, it’s okay if you can’t.”

 

Weiss’s neck hurts when she moves it.

 

“Okay…” the voice breathes out, a long breath that Weiss can feel. The way it sags their body, how her much smaller one sinks into it and the arms holding her upright loosen slightly in the motion.

 

Then they breathe in, and again Weiss can feel the contours of a body much large than hers pressing against her back, and for some reason, she doesn’t feel like wriggling away.

 

She’s reminded of Opa, sitting in his lap as he whispered the words to a storybook in both their laps. How one of his hands would wrap around her to keep her steady and the other would trail over the words, fingertips large enough for her to fit her entire fist around one of them.

 

Weiss’s lungs expand as her holder gently breathes behind her.

 

“That’s it, now out, just as slow.”

 

Again, their body sags, deflates beneath her and Weiss’s body falls to fit into the contours as it does. So, she lets it go, lets the precious, cool air escape her lips, smoke free, and sags loosely into their hold. The hands that have been holding her upright slide up and down her arms, words of encouragement mumbled gently into the top of her head.

 

Then they repeat.

 

And repeat.

 

And repeat.

 

Until Weiss can breathe without the pressure at her back reminding her when to release and when to pull. Until the arms around her have stopped clutching so tight, like they’re afraid if they don’t she’s going to break apart in their hold. Until she can open her eyes and make sense of the expanse of color before them, turning the blurs into shapes and, finally, back into the room that she knows like the back of her hand.

 

The large brown blurs turn to beds, and the grey wall dotted with splotches of color turn to Yang’s posters. It’s like someone’s passed a piece of clear glass in front of her after years of looking through one stained with dirt, seeing the world with new eyes.

 

And the large, tanned arms wrapped around her waist.

 

“Better?” the voice says the words directly into the crown of Weiss’s head and she springs away, or, rather, tumbles out of Yang’s hold in a desperate bid to avoid embarrassing herself further. Instead, she whacks her head on the closest object, her own bed, and ends up facing a slightly bewildered and more than a little confused blonde teenager. “Uh… Weiss?”

 

“Fine!” she shouts and ignores the sudden warmth that has taken refuge in her face. “I’m fine!”

 

Yang blinks once, twice, three times, and then shakes her head. It’s a slow motion but the face she makes is the same one she’d make if she were trying to rid herself of a spiderweb. She takes in a breath, no longer the slow steady ones that were pressed into Weiss’s back, but a quick and slightly exasperated one that’s followed by her springing to her feet.

 

“No, you’re not, but I doubt you’re gonna want to talk about it like that, so how about we get some food and work our way up to it?” There’s a hand thrust into Weiss’s space and there’s that feeling again. The one that seems to rear its ugly head only once her brain has gotten back into control and not while she’s busy embarrassing herself. The warring ideals, one screaming for her to take as much comfort as she can get, the other ordering her to throw up her walls and box herself in away from any and all prying eyes.

 

Slowly, oh so miserably slowly, she follows the arm upwards and finally meets the lilac gaze looking down at her. Yang doesn’t move, doesn’t leave, doesn’t drop her hand or huff out a ‘have it your way’. Her hand remains extended, open and inviting, and though her eyes are the same there’s a steel hiding behind them. A hint of red threatening to leak through.

 

She’s not going to take no for an answer.

 

Weiss sighs, and takes the hand.


	3. Yang II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Weiss, don’t lie to me.” There’s a rawness in her voice, a vulnerability in the way that her eyebrows crinkle, but all Weiss can hear is the echo of the mug hitting the table. Porcelain hitting wood and shattering from the force of it. She’s not sure where she recognizes that sound from, but it rings through her like a bell being struck against her spine. The mug in her hands creaks under the pressure from her hands, if she squeezes any tighter it might shatter.
> 
> Weiss swallows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took for-FUCKING-ever.  
> I would apologize but it's been hectic and I'm just heading out of the frying pan into the fire. Wish me luck with AP tests and finals kiddos. High-School sucks. Please enjoy, or try to. I do apologize, I know it's not my best but I've been fiddling with this thing for about a month now and I'm still not happy with it so I'm just waving my white flag now.  
> Peace  
> -M

“So…” Yang’s voice is remarkably steady and for the first time in all of Weiss knowing her, there’s no joke in it. There’s no humor hiding in her voice, no concealed joke, no mirth in her gaze, just the weight of her eyes. The finality of her setting down the kettle, tea bag hanging out the side.

 

Weiss swallows, unsure if its nerves that make it hard or how Yang looks more like an adult than she has in the entirety of their time at Beacon.

 

“I know that you either don’t want to answer this or don’t know how too, but I want you to try.” Yang pours two cups of tea with a precision and grace that speaks of practice that Weiss would not have thought she possessed. “What happened?”

 

Weiss blinks.

 

“I…”

 

She doesn’t know.

 

Yang’s eyes don’t leave her face. They’re bright and lavender and calm so she knows that she’s not mad at her, but the seriousness in her voice, how her gaze won't leave her face, it makes her heart pound in a way that hurts.

 

Slowly, Weiss tightens her hold on her cup. “I’ve been stressed, that’s all.”

 

Yang frowns, carefully, gently, she lifts her own cup to her face and sips in a way that Weiss would not expect from someone with shotguns on her arms.

 

“Stressed?” she asks, “Weiss that was not stress, that was a panic attack.”

 

Weiss’s hands tighten further, her knuckles turn white.

 

“Yang… can we not do this right now?” she pleads and Yang shakes her head, setting the mug back down.

 

Yang has always been a… colorful character. Not in a bad way, certainly not, it was just… she was so different from Weiss.

 

Weiss was a big enough of a person to admit that she and Ruby’s initial conflict stemmed from that despite their extreme differences in working style they got the same product. She had seen Ruby’s focus on feeling and natural talent and… well if she were a bit jealous that she’d spent years honing her sword skills and the younger girl got her fighting style after seeing her use it only twice, that was her own business.

 

For some reason, Yang wasn’t the same. Weiss couldn’t really pin it, but if she had to guess it was the fact that… they were too different. Her and Ruby at least had the same desperate drive for success, and Blake shared her love of the calmer things in life, Yang was… Yang. Bright colors, children’s laughter, blazing campfires and the wrath of the sun itself. Yang was enthusiasm, summer and warmth, and comfort.

 

Weiss was cold, tempered. Cold and calculating and wit sharp enough to cut you if you weren’t careful.

 

The two had scarcely interacted, and certainly never in anything less than a group setting. Yang was an extrovert, the very definition of the word, and that posited itself in her sheer love of taking things to the extreme. Weiss had never seen her like this, soft and serious and…

 

Concerned.

 

Yang’s brows are drawn together, but there’s no anger in her posture, none of the sun’s wrath coming to beat her down into the ground, just a gentle, encouraging warmth.

 

She doesn’t know how to react to that.

 

“I know you, okay?” she says and Weiss can’t help but wonder if there is any truth in that statement. “If we don’t talk about this now you’re going to throw up those walls of yours and we’re never going to.” Yang tugs at a lock of hair, gaze still unmoving from Weiss’s. She feels like an animal stuck under a microscope for inspection.

 

“Just… let’s start from the beginning. Has this happened before?”

 

Weiss blinks.

 

“No. No, I mean… there was the thing with… at night…” her voice feels so small, like a child that knows it’s in trouble. Yang frowns, fingers continuing to twist in the locks of golden hair.

 

“Okay, so before Beacon, this never happened? No panic attacks, no shaking, no nothing?”

 

Weiss frowns. “I…” she thinks, no. None that she can remember. Her home life consisted of training and reading, and more training, and then training some more. She had to get into Beacon, there could be nothing stopping that, especially not sudden and unnecessary bouts of panic that made her feel as if her brain were trying to escape her skull. “No, nothing.”

 

Yang hums, and finally, finally, releases Weiss from her gaze. She can physically feel a weight drop from her shoulders as she takes another pull from her mug, settling her gaze instead on the ceiling. Weiss’s heart hammers in her chest, she still feels somewhat shaky, fragile, like her body hasn’t completely settled down. It’s waiting for the cannon to fire so that it can begin pulling her apart from the inside once again.

 

“A new development then…” Yang muses, her fingers tap against the table. “And this started after the whole White Fang fiasco…” her eyes snap back to Weiss’s face and that weight is back, nearly crushing her. “Have you been having nightmares?”

 

Weiss swallows, “I…” Nightmares?

 

“None I remember…” she murmurs and that’s only partially a lie. She knows she’s had them, woken up in cold sweats several times this week, but she never remembers the contents. Just flashes of cold, a sense of longing and loneliness that pierces her through to the bone.

 

Yang hums, disapproving. That heavy gaze darts down to the mug still clutched in Weiss’s shaking hands, then drags back upwards to her face. Weiss swallows.

 

“Are you sure?”

 

Weiss bites her lip.

 

“Positive.”

 

Yang sighs, heavy and violent, a pulse of air escapes her mouth like cannon fire. She sets down her mug with a heavy plunk and the tea left in it goes reaching for the sky.

 

“Weiss, don’t lie to me.” There’s a rawness in her voice, a vulnerability in the way that her eyebrows crinkle, but all Weiss can hear is the echo of the mug hitting the table. Porcelain hitting wood and shattering from the force of it. She’s not sure where she recognizes that sound from, but it rings through her like a bell being struck against her spine. The mug in her hands creaks under the pressure from her hands, if she squeezes any tighter it might shatter.

 

Weiss swallows.

 

“Do you know what I saw when I came into the dorm?” Her voice is full of an urgency that she doesn’t understand. “You were so pale I could see the _veins_ in your _face_.” Yang’s face is so open, so vulnerable. “You were choking and gasping for air like someone had closed your windpipe, shaking so bad that you couldn’t stand up properly.”

 

Weiss’s heart thumps in her chest again. She doesn’t know why it feels like someone has closed a hand around it.

 

“Don’t lie to me,” Yang hisses, no longer a barely controlled shout, just an escape of air from lips that look dangerously close to trembling. Her shoulders hunch in on herself like she’s trying to protect a flame from getting blown out by the wind. The violet in her eyes is unmoved, unchanged, not a trace of anger despite her intensity. “I… I don’t want to see you like that ever again.”

 

The hand in Weiss’s chest tightens, snapping her heart in two like it means nothing, a shell thrown against the rocks as the tide comes in.

 

“Yang I…” her throat tightens and that feeling like the world has been thrown into motion while she’s standing still resurges with a vengeance. She lets out a choked breath that might’ve been a word but becomes a half-formed sob. Yang surges upwards, quickly rounding the counter to keep her from falling.

 

Her heart thumps hard, a tangible weight drops within her chest.

 

“Hey, breathe Weiss. Just breathe.” Yang’s arms come up to wrap around her middle again, pressing against the ridges of her spine and moving up and down in a pattern that Weiss is sure is supposed to be soothing.

 

But her entire body feels as if it has been filled with bees, swarming and buzzing angrily beneath her skin. Each point of contact gives them a place, a target, to sting, pushing around against her flesh like thousands of tiny little needles.

 

Her brain screeches, screams with such force that she physically shrinks away from it. Her body curls into a ball and Yang has to practically scoop her up to keep her from falling to the floor.

 

“Weiss?”

 

Weiss can’t move, her chest aches, her fingers and toes tremble, she watches with unfocused eyes as each appendage shakes before her, white and porcelain and so so _so_ very fragile. She’s sure if she moved them they’d spring apart like pieces of glass. She’s glass, porcelain, fit to shatter at the lightest breeze and fall to the floor in little more than a heap.

 

“Breathe.” Yang’s voice sounds miles away, but the hand on her spine doesn’t leave and, despite her fragile state, nothing breaks apart at the contact. Her bones don’t poke through her skin and cut through Yang’s flesh, her breaths aren’t so cold that Yang recoils. She remains, steady and strong. Holding her together even as she crumbles before her eyes.

 

Weiss wants to scream. She doesn’t know, she doesn’t know why she’s breaking, why she constantly feels as if she’s walking on eggshells and no matter what she does she still breaks them. Weiss doesn’t know why, and that frustrates her to the point of no return.

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry for yelling,” Yang hisses against the crown of her head, Weiss can feel her body moving as she breathes again, and she forces her brain to focus on it rather than the turmoil that is trying to make sense of her own cluttered mind. She’s breaking again, she hates that’s all she seems capable of doing.

 

“Not...” she wheezes, “Not the yelling…”

 

Yang pauses. “What then?” She asks and Weiss takes the smallest of comforts in the steadiness of her voice. Yang’s always been good at being steady when it counted.

 

Weiss sighs, shakily, but a sigh nonetheless.

 

“Mug.”

 

The single word leaves her lips in an almost embarrassing way, she doesn’t know why, but that sound, porcelain shattering as it slammed against the wood, sent chills down her spine. Vaguely, she thinks she might’ve seen something similar once upon a time, an argument between her Father and sister that got a little out of hand, but the memory is murky at best. All she really knows is that sound: shatter, then shouting.

 

Didn’t Winter use to wear a bandage on her left hand?

 

She doesn’t remember.

 

“Mug?” Yang questions.

 

 

“Fa… Father bro… broke one.” She doesn’t know what she’s saying, what she means. All she can think about it broken porcelain. White stained with the remains of a dark black liquid, and something much brighter against the jagged edges. She can’t remember why. She can’t.

 

Yang freezes, stock still and rigid against her spine. Weiss isn’t sure why, she’s not even sure if she’s breathing. Then, in a voice softer than Weiss has ever heard it, she asks a question.

 

“Is your… at the coffee shop, you didn’t…” she stops, for a moment. And Weiss can feel the hands on her arms, the ones that are barely holding her together, tighten. “Weiss… what’s your father like?”

 

Weiss blinks.

 

“What?”

 

It feels as if the air has been knocked back into her lungs and she spins around. Her face is serious and, for the first time in the conversation, there’s a hint of red in her irises.

 

“The other day at the coffee shop, you didn’t know what Yulemas was.” Her jaw is set and there’s no question in her voice.

 

Weiss doesn’t understand, “It’s not celebrated in Atlas.”

 

Yang’s brows furrow.

 

 

“Yulemas is celebrated everywhere. Half of Yulemas decorations are produced in Atlas.”

 

She doesn’t understand why she sounds so sad.

 

“Father never mentioned it.” She defends, “He was always gone during the winter months, I assume abiding by other’s traditions.”

 

Yang’s lips purse together.

 

“What’s your father like, Weiss?” It’s the second time she’s asked, and it’s said in that same soft voice, like she fears the words could break her.

 

She doesn’t understand, she’s already broken.

 

“Stern,” she answers, as she always has, as she always will. “He expects the best and nothing less. He’s a good man with strong ideals and a strict sense of duty.”

 

Yang’s expression doesn’t change.

 

“When’s the last time you spoke to him, face to face?”

 

Weiss stops.

 

“Yang, I don’t understand what you’re asking. What does any of this have to do with-”

 

“Just answer the question, please.” Yang’s hands move, up her arms to settle against the tops of her shoulders.

 

Weiss can’t understand.

 

“I…”

 

Yang’s hands shake.

 

“I don’t remember.” Weiss answers. Honest.

 

Yang nods, gentle, quiet, and, finally, she releases her. She stands, returns to her seat, and carefully, oh so carefully, lifts the mug once again. Only then does Weiss realize that the porcelain never so much as dented.

 

Yang swallows a mouthful, then nods to herself as if she has answered a great question.

 

“I’m going to ask you something,” Weiss doesn’t know whether to hate that soft voice or fear it at this point. She’s not sure if those two things can be one in the same. “And you don’t have to answer. I just… I just want you to think about it.”

 

Yang holds the mug in her hands, fingers loose around the base, as if she’s holding a fragile child in her grip. Slowly, Weiss drags her eyes away from Yang’s hands.

 

Her eyes are a maroon color that chills her to the bone.

 

“Has your father ever hit you?”

 

“Yes…?” Weiss says, confused. Unsure why Yang looks as if she’s just asked her if the world is round and expects her to say flat. Parents punish children when they misbehave, everyone knows that. Sometimes that manifests itself in more physical punishments, but that’s fine. That’s normal, that’s-

 

The words have scarcely left her lips before Yang’s expression crumples. Any semblance of calm, any traces of purple are gone in the blink of an eye and that mug, that porcelain mug cradled so very gently, shatters in her palms. Blood spews from unprotected skin and falls to the floor along with chunks of white glass, stained with the residue to create a demented portrait of anger across the tile floor.

  
~

 

The carpet is blue, the hand is pale, pale as snow after it’s very first fall. Not a foot tread upon it, and it’s covered in blood. Crimson blood, white glass, and bone. She can see bone, torn flesh for the world to see and words leaving a bitter, sharp tongue, shouted through the corridors of the mansion with a power she can scarcely understand.

 

“I am doing what’s right!”

 

Across the table, a man, no, a wiry tower of bone and ice stands, looming over the speaker with murder in his coal black eyes.

 

“You are a disgracing the family name-”

 

“My name!” the first shouts, “Not yours, mine! And you can take your fucking name, Jacques _Snow_ , and shove it up your ass for all I care!”

 

It happens too fast she barely sees it. The quick, angry, sharp slap of a hand across flesh.

 

It’s the only time she’s ever seen her father touch Winter.

 

Winter stumbles, falls, stutters backward until she’s pressed against the wall, bloodied hand held to the side of her face and an expression of nothing but pure rage in her eyes.

 

Blood stains her cheek.

 

“Du Schweinehund! Was glaubst du wie man ein Kind erzieht?!”

 

“Nicht in diesem Ton junge Dame! Ich bin dein Vater und du schuldest mir Respekt!”

 

"Respekt?! Den musst du dir erst verdiehnen!" 

 

Winter swung.

  
~

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” the words are on repeat, a record scratch in her ear as hands continuously stroke up and down her spine.

 

Weiss’s throat has closed itself once again, but at least she can force oxygen past it, so that’s a plus.

 

“Yang…” she rasps the word and she doesn’t know why it feels as if she’s lifting weights rather than saying words. The hand on her back continues its ministrations but the mantra of ‘I’m sorry’ peters off, fading into the background noise of the kitchen. Cheap white tile stare at her and she prays, she’s not sure to who, but prays that it’s her imagination that makes it look like she can see her reflection in it.

 

Her body is so cold, so very very cold. She fears she’s made of ice and if Yang, who is the embodiment of the sun itself, continues to smother her like this she’s going to melt.

 

“I shouldn’t have yelled,” Yang’s hands tighten against her back and it’s at this point that Weiss wonders how many times Yang has held someone together while they broke down on top of her.

 

“What… what just happened…?”

 

She doesn’t really know what to say, how to continue, she’s not entirely sure if what she saw was even real. Her sister never had shouting matches with her father, at least never with her in the room. And Father certainly wouldn’t hit _Winter_ of all people, he’d only ever struck Weiss and Whitley and those strikes were deserved after a long proceeding…

 

Argument…

 

Well, she supposed that was an argument, wasn’t it?

 

But had Winter deserved it?

 

 _“You can take your fucking name, Jacques_ **_Snow_ ** _, and shove it up your ass for all I care!”_

 

That didn’t exactly sound like her sister. Winter would never speak ill of Father, and certainly not to his face like that. She respected him, a great deal so, there was no way that actually happened, right?

 

It was just a fake memory brought on by feelings of panic, right?

 

“A flashback,” Yang supplies and carefully, releases her grip on Weiss. The rage that she saw is gone, but there’s still a quiet anger in the way that her eyebrows sit still and flat against her forehead. Not a scowl, but certainly not a happy expression either. “It’s a common symptom of PTSD.”

 

Weiss blinks and stares at Yang like she’s grown a second head.

 

“It’s a symptom of _what?_ ”

 

“Weiss,” Yang sighs, and retracts an arm to wipe at suspiciously red eyes, and she isn’t talking about the irises. “It fits, panic attacks, nightmares, flashbacks, trouble concentrating, aversion to touch,” at that Yang vaguely gestures before awkwardly dropping her hands to her sides, “I just… I’m not a doctor, but all of those point to a pretty obvious conclusion-”

 

“Yang, are you seriously diagnosing me with PTSD over, what, stress?!”

 

“Oh for- it’s clearly a little more than stress-”

 

“No, it’s not, you’re blowing this way out of proportion. I am _fine_ -”

 

“It’s not normal for people to flinch when you say their goddamn name, Weiss!” Yang spits the name out like it physically hurts to do so and Weiss, hating herself for it all the same, _flinches_.

 

Yang freezes, then deflates. She closes her eyes and draws in a deep, steadying breath. Then with that stupid gentle voice she used earlier she speaks, and Weiss hates herself just a little bit more that the sound alone is enough to stop the shaking of her hands.

 

“It’s not normal for people to hit their kids, or to get so scared at loud sounds you fall into a panic attack.”

 

Weiss hates that she can’t force herself to lift her gaze from where it has fixated on her shoes. Hands barely graze her arms again, resting at the elbow as if asking for permission to touch.

 

“It’s not normal to shout at people for being concerned at your well being, or to look at someone you like and want to impress and immediately resort to making yourself as annoying as possible in a thinly veiled scheme to get them to stay away from you.”

 

When Weiss doesn’t move away the hands settle, stroking up and down along her arms with their thumbs.

 

“It’s not normal to be afraid of caring about someone.”

 

Weiss continues staring at her shoes. She doesn’t want to look up and have to deal with the concerned furrow she just _knows_ is in Yang’s brow.

 

“You’re not fine, Weiss.”

 

Weiss hates that she can feel her bones jump at the name. That the flesh along her arms jumps for the heavens without her consent. She hates that Yang is right, that she’s always right and observant and so stupidly, stupidly smart.

 

Yang shouldn’t be smart. She never studies, never so much as looks at a textbook, and her participation in class could be classified as minimal on a good day. She doesn’t even possess the same tactical prowess as her younger sister. Instead, she’s all, powerful hits and relying on an explosive semblance to carry her weight in battle.

 

Yet she can take a look at a person and immediately tell you ten things about them despite never having a single conversation. A week into living together she found that the blonde had taken to leaving a mug on her nightstand every morning, coffee dark and brewed to perfection and, on the rare days that she did not sleep much the previous night, mixed with the perfect amount of cream.

 

Yang does not have the same drive or skills as her sister, instead, the skills she does have are something that Weiss knows that no matter how hard she’d try at it, she’ll never be able to possess: a complete and utter understanding of human emotions and habits.

 

She hates that Yang can look at her and know that she’s splitting apart at the seams and, even when she doesn’t, know why.

 

“Fuck off.”

 

Yang blinks, not expecting that response. A bemused smile crosses her face.

 

“W… What?”

 

“I said, fuck off?” Weiss means for it to be a declaration, a shout, an order of some sort. It comes out like a question, like she isn’t even sure why she said it. If she’s honest, she doesn’t.

 

Yang _laughs_.

 

“Is-Is that your resp-”

 

“Apparently!”

 

Just like that the smile is gone, the laughter faded like a dream and Weiss isn’t sure why. Doesn’t know why her voice is shaking again, why her hands are reaching outwards, or why her face feels tight. She doesn’t know, and she hates it.

 

“I-” her breath catches on something in her throat, it’s tightening again. She forces words through it because all she can think to do is speak, shoot out words, accusations, anything to get Yang to back off. Leave her alone to suffer in the same pit of self-doubt and raging trauma she’s buried for years upon years. She wants to tell her to get away, leave her alone before she too finds what it’s like to play with fire when it burns cold.

 

“I don’t know!” she shouts, actually manages to shout, spit, scream. Her vocal cords strain and the sound is the exact opposite of Yang’s. Yang’s voice is soft and calm and soothing like a cool breeze in the desert. Weiss’s cracks and scratches and digs, shattered pieces of glass stabbing for any piece of open flesh it can latch onto.

 

“I don’t fucking know! I don’t! You think I... I have control over this?! That I don’t wish every day that I could just look people in the eye and tell them that I actually give a damn?! That every time I look in the mirror I don’t see _him!_ That I can’t hear his voice ringing in my head every second of every _fucking_ day because that’s the only voice I’ve heard for seventeen **_fucking_ ** years of my goddamn life!”

 

It’s raw and bloody and it _hurts._ It hurts so much that she feels like her chest has been pried open and the insides are being set on fire.

 

She keeps screaming, she can’t see anything besides her own tears.

 

“I know I’m not fucking _fi-_ **_ne_ **!”

 

Her voice snaps.

 

Her chest explodes.

 

Her hands tremble.

 

Everything is broken and rusted, corroded, lost to time and emotion and shattered to pieces in her small porcelain fingertips.

 

She’s so damn cold.

 

“I know.” Yang hasn’t moved, hasn’t flinched, hasn’t left. She just stands there, solid, unmoving, still. “I just need you to admit it.”


	4. Blake

The changes aren’t immediate, or loud, or even that noticeable to anyone who doesn’t live inside team RWBY’s dorm, but Weiss can see them like they’ve been printed on the backs of her eyelids.

 

She’s not entirely sure what agreement she and Yang came to after their little “talk”. She knows that she screamed some more, knows that Yang didn’t leave despite that, and in the end she’d just ended up back in their dorm, wrapped in a blanket in her bed while Yang quietly hummed to herself, sorting through her closet.

 

She wasn’t entirely sure what that was supposed to accomplish, but after the day she’d had and the pain that was manifesting itself between her eyebrows, she decided to just let it be.

 

After that things went quiet. Yang didn’t bring up the conversation, and Blake and Ruby didn’t even seem to notice the underlying tension between them. It wasn’t until, of all people, Pyrrha commented on Yang’s continued insistence of making sure that Weiss had a study partner that the other two started to take notice. At the time Yang brushed it off, making some joke about not doing well on a paper and trying to ‘steal some intelligence,’ but shortly after Blake volunteered to study with Weiss after class one day. That had caught some attention as the two had barely spoken since the whole White Fang incident and Blake would’ve probably rather eaten her own fist than deal with conflict.

 

But Yang let her go, encouraged it even, flashing thumbs up the entire walk towards the campus library as Weiss tried to refrain from shoving her head through her textbook and wearing it like a necklace. The affair had been… awkward… to say the least. Blake only spoke three words the whole time, two of which were to her book and not to Weiss. The last had simply been to say ‘sorry’ when she accidentally stepped on Weiss’s discarded shoe. But she knew that Blake was really just trying to understand why Yang had suddenly taken such an interest in her, part of her just wanted to come clean and tell her that it had absolutely nothing to with any sort of ‘attraction’, the other part just thought it was funny how Blake’s solution to feeling somewhat jealous of her taking up her partner’s time was to take up her own with her instead.

 

Truly, those two were hopeless.

 

Ruby, on the other hand, took a slightly different approach.

 

“Hey Weiss!” a pair of silver eyes glint at her from the underside of the bunk above, a curtain of red and black that nearly hung far enough down to touch Weiss’s face proceeding the two.

 

“Hello, Ruby.” The monotone in her voice is a practiced skill that she prizes above all else, but even her best attempts at disinterest aren’t enough to repel the unstoppable force that is Ruby Rose.

 

“What’cha doing?” the sing-song tone sends a spike up Weiss’s back like a wrong chord in a symphony.

 

“Studying.” She monotones once again in hopes of dissuading the exception to newton’s third law. Ruby whines, a noise that is remarkably dog-like, before releasing whatever hold was keeping her aloft in her bed and flopping ungracefully to the floor. The resounding thud is enough to make her wince, but Ruby just rolls over onto her stomach and pushes herself up in a push-up position.

 

“Studying is boooringggg…” she drawls and Weiss can’t help but feel the corners of her mouth twitching, just slightly. She hates the fact that Ruby’s antics work on her of all people.

 

“I’m pretty sure we’ve already had this conversation.”

 

Ruby looks up at her with a legendary pout, one that Weiss has only seen her pull out once before when Yang refused to give her the last cookie.

 

She feels her right eye beginning to twitch.

 

“What do you want…?” she sighs the words out in defeat because Ruby only ever starts conversations with a pout when she wants Weiss to do something she knows that she’s not going to like.

 

Ruby’s pout remains firmly in place, but she can still see the glint of something that’s between mischief and something darker in her eyes.

 

“Go on a date with me?”

 

Weiss’s textbook clatters to the floor.

 

 _“Pardon?”_ The word comes out as a squeak, so high she’s sure that every fanus within the walls of Beacon just doubled over in pain. Ruby just remains there, pouting with those big silver eyes and bottom lip jutted out, trembling in the cool air of their shared dorm.

 

“There’s a fair in town at Vale,” she says, seemingly oblivious to the seven different levels of cardiac arrest that Weiss is going into. “And I _reeeeeaaaaalllly_ wanna go, but couple’s admission is waaay cheaper than singles, plus it gets you access to the haunted house and the water rides, but I need a date and everybody else is either too busy to go or already has a date. So pleaaaase, be my pretend date, for just, like, one night?”

 

Weiss’s heart, which up to this point has been attempting to make a mad escape through her ribs, suddenly drops down to her toes, dead and silent. She doesn’t know what else she expected, it’s Ruby of all people and while she can be pretty direct in her conquests, even she has more tact than to outright say that she wants a date.

 

“Ruby, I could just buy you a ticket if the issue is money,” Weiss says, deadpan and hoping this will give her an excuse to patch up her bruised heart in peace. Ruby, however, seems to be on a mission.

 

“But that doesn’t come with the haunted house!” She groans, flopping backward into Weiss’s lap and staring up at her pleadingly. “Besides, it’ll be fun!” she grins, “Think of it as a partner bonding experience.”

 

Weiss feels sick.

 

“Last time we had a ‘Partner Bonding Experience’ I fell out of a window.”

 

“It was only the second story, you didn’t even get a bruise!”

 

“Not the point, Ruby.”

 

“WEEEEEEIIIIIIiiiiIIiIiIiIIIIIIIiiSSSS!” Ruby whines, rolling her body so that she was now looking at her in the proper direction, silver eyes still large and round with their pleads, “Please.”

 

That last word, said not in a whine, but an earnest request, breaks her resolve. She lets out a sigh that could move mountains.

 

“Fine.” 

 

Ruby cheers, shooting up so fast that Weiss can hear her skull knock into her bed on the way up, but that somehow doesn’t deter her from her victory dance. Weiss just reaches down and picks up her textbook, rolling her eyes fondly. “But I get to decide when we’re done. No arguments, got it?”

 

Ruby spins on her heel, snapping a hand up in a salute. “Yes, ma’am!”

 

~

 

“Ruby.”

 

“Yes, Weiss?” The girl looks over at her and for an instant all she can think about is the fact that if this is the last thing she sees before she dies- those goddamn silver eyes that, which she will deny till the day she dies, haunt her dreams almost as often as her father- she might actually be okay with it. 

 

Then she remembers that they’re over thirty-feet in the air.

 

“I want to go back to the-” the track for the roller coaster goes dead silent as their ascension ends, and that’s all the warning she gets before suddenly they’re in a contest with the ground that she’s sure they’re going to lose.

 

“dooOOOOOOOOOOOOORM!”

  
~

 

Often times when Ruby decided to take Weiss on one of her fabled ‘bonding exercises’ she’d come back from it worse for wear and feeling like the two had accomplished the exact opposite of bonding, whatever that be called. Usually, that just stemmed from the fact that Ruby seemed to think that competing against each other was a good way to bond and Weiss ~~tended to be a bit of a sore loser~~ found competition unnecessary and arbitrary.

 

However, occasionally- and the times _were_ rare, though they did seem to happen more often these days- she’d return from a ‘bonding exercise’ tired, but content. She supposed that was because she’d gotten used to Ruby’s eccentricities and could ignore them when they reared their heads, but also because (as much as she might deny it) Ruby did, to a certain extent, know her. They’d been partners for at least 4 months now and been on civil terms for the better part of that. Ruby did not possess the same degree of social awareness as her sister, but for those few she did deem her friends she paid special attention to.

 

This particular time, Weiss found herself laying across the bench of the airship on their way back to Beacon, stuffed Beowulf clutched close to her chest, and with her head in Ruby’s lap, only half aware of how she got there in the first place. For her part, Ruby didn’t seem concerned with the position and it was late enough that the rest of the car they were in was empty so she didn’t have to worry about appearances. However, Weiss was still struck with the fact that she hadn’t felt this- warm she supposed was the proper term- in a long time. It was still winter, the entire festival had been cold and wet and dreadful, her whole body had gotten soaked and sore on the several rides that Ruby had pushed her onto despite her protests, and she’d consumed enough sugar and grease to make even Ruby raise a brow.

 

Yet, she hadn’t had that much fun in years. Ruby’s boisterous cheers encouraging her to challenge unsuspecting townspeople to games of darts, the feeling of getting off of that horrifying death contraption called a ‘drop tower’ and immediately demanding to go again because that rush of adrenaline made the hair on her arms stand up, watching Ruby make horrendous faces in the funhouse mirrors within the haunted house, and laughing almost hysterically when a woman claiming to be a mystic told Ruby that she’d eventually challenge Ozpin to a duel and win would all live on in her memories as some of the best experiences in her life. The Beowulf plush currently clutched to her chest a relic of the night they’d had, a gift given to her after Ruby broke some poor young man’s strength game.

 

Ruby’s grin looked equally pleased with herself, hand absentmindedly tapping against the side of the airship and for once Weiss couldn’t find the energy nor the annoyance to care.

 

“Hey Weiss,” she muttered eventually, breaking the silence of the airship carefully bridging the gap between Vale and Beacon. Weiss, who hadn’t realized she’d been getting dangerously close to drifting off, snapped back to wakefulness.

 

“Hmm?”

 

Ruby’s gaze slid over from where she’d been watching the city of Vale grow smaller beneath them. Weiss was struck again with the abnormality of those eyes. She knew that Ruby had what was considered a rare trait, most people didn’t even know that silver-eyed individuals existed, believing them instead to be either myths or exaggerations of pale blue-eyed individuals. Weiss, however, had the privilege of knowing better. Ruby’s eyes glinted in the fluorescent lighting, looking almost like mirrors, reflecting Weiss’s own slightly tired gaze at her.

 

“Can I ask you something?” Ruby’s voice had different modes, Weiss was infinitely familiar with that at this point, and this one in particular, when it dropped an octave and rested softly just above her own, always made her feel tense. It was Ruby’s ‘something is wrong and I want to know what’ voice.

 

Weiss felt herself swallowing thickly in preparation.

 

“Depends on the question.” She slowly rose back into a sitting position. Ruby snorted, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth that did not resemble the bright one that she’d been seeing all night. If anything it looked like Blake’s, guarded and older that it should’ve.

 

“That’s fair,” is all she replied with, returning her gaze to the city beneath them. From her new perspective, Weiss could now see the glinting lights of the carnival they’d left, the rides and attractions still flashing their rainbow dissonance across the sky.

 

“What happened with you and Yang?”

 

The question came without warning, with Ruby’s continued silence and their gazes both fixed respectively on the carnival they’d left, she’d assumed the conversation over, whatever question Ruby had planned forgotten in favor of another time when she thought she’d be able to squeeze out a clear answer. Apparently not.

 

As it was, Weiss felt as if someone had dropped a dumbbell on her shoulders and then left her to attempt to figure out how to get back up again.

 

Ruby seems to take her stunned silence as an answer and slowly turns her head to meet Weiss’s panicked gaze. There’s no accusation in her face, no confusion either like Blake had harbored, instead, there’s a steady concern. Her eyebrows are just slightly scrunched, she can see the muscles beneath the skin twitching with the want to bridge the gap between brows, but being held back by Ruby’s will.

 

“You don’t have to answer, I know how you get sometimes with personal questions,” her voice is barely a whisper and, somehow, Weiss feels as if this large, open airship made to transport dozens of people from one place to another is equivalent to a small dorm, two girls sitting face to face on a single bed with their thighs touching and secrets whispered between them, never to be repeated to another soul. Their words safe from the world and only confided within each other.

 

She’s never had the experience, only seen it in movies or read of it in books, but this is what she assumes it feels like. Warm, and soft, and safe. Funny, when she knows that Ruby is not any of those things. She is loud, and wild, and unstoppable, but her face is gentle and her voice holds none of its usual exuberance that leaves a slightly frightened taste in her mouth despite all of her claims of ‘being used to it’ at this point.

 

“What do you mean exactly?” Weiss decides on, answering the question with another one, her father would be proud. She knows that Ruby means how Yang has taken a sudden interest in her habits and is making sure that she has proper social interaction and eats and sleeps like a normal person is supposed to but no teenager ever really does. Ruby’s face shows that she knows that Weiss is stalling, but she answers her anyway.

 

“Yang cares about people,” she states bluntly and Weiss can’t quite resist the urge to snort, “that’s no secret, and she cares about us especially because we’re her team and, as far as she’s concerned, her family. But recently she’s taken a special interest in you.” There’s still no accusation in Ruby’s voice, “It’s not a bad thing, but I know my sister, she doesn’t get this obsessed with other people’s well being unless they’ve given her a reason to.”

 

Weiss feels the hands that are holding her plush tighten slightly.

 

“Ruby I…” her gaze immediately darts to the floor, even as Yang’s words about avoidance of eye contact ring in her head. “I don’t… I can’t…”

 

If she were having this conversation with Yang she has no doubt the blonde would probably be grabbing her hands or shoulders about now, or just tilting her chin up to look at her. Yang always was the most physical out of all of them. Ruby, on the other hand, is the most humble. She slides from the bench onto her knees to catch Weiss’s eyes where they’ve settled on the floor, looking up at her with a concerned tilt to her brows.

 

“I get that whatever it is, it’s personal,” Ruby’s hands reach out to hover over her knees, but stop there, refusing to settle there without expressed permission, “I just want you to know that I’m here to listen if you ever do want to share. I’m your partner, and I want to be there for you when you need me, no matter what it is.”

 

Something in Weiss’s chest makes sharp contact with her ribcage and she has the sudden urge to cry. She shoves it as far down as it will go. 

 

“Ruby…” she turns her head so she no longer has to look into those imploring silver eyes and instead glances back out the window. They’ve crossed a significant portion of the gap and will be arriving in Beacon soon. For some reason, she doesn’t want this room of quiet to end just yet, despite Ruby’s hard questions and requests for honesty. “Can you tell me something about when you and Yang were kids?”

 

Ruby blinks, obviously taken aback by the seemingly random request.

 

“Uh, sure?”

 

She launches into some tale about how when Yang was a child she refused to get her hair cut, one that Weiss has already heard and teased the blonde about quite often, and then spins into how when she got her first haircut Yang had cried for hours on end, saying that the barber had ‘stolen’ her sister’s hair and that she was going to go beat him up for her. It’s a simple story, one that should be funny and cute.

 

Weiss just waits for her to finish.

 

“When I was seven years old,” Weiss whispers the words softly enough that if anyone else was in the airship with them they would be impossible to hear. As it is Ruby has to lean in for them. “My father had one of his business partners over for tea.”

 

As she speaks she feels the cool, white walls of the airship fade away only to be replaced by the very similarly cool and white walls of her childhood home.

 

“I don’t think I really understood the importance of the meeting, or that the man that my father was talking to probably didn’t even know that my father had any children.” The current line of Schnee children was a closely guarded secret, one that she’d been told as a child was a protective measure so that if there were assailants they wouldn’t know who to attack, but as she’d gotten older and the mantle of heiress had been passed onto her rather than her sister, she realized it was done so that the mantle could be passed that easily. 

 

“Regardless, I did what all children do when their parents are ignoring them and they want something, I threw a tantrum.” Weiss’s lips curl into a self-deprecating smile, and Ruby smiles too, though hers looks like she doesn’t know if it should be funny or not. “I don’t even remember over what, I just know that I got upset over something and, very quickly, began making a scene.” Her smile slowly slips away, replaced by a much sharper curl of her lips, one that is dangerously close to a sneer, “My father grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into another room. I’m not entirely sure what exactly happened after that. I know that we shouted for a considerable length of time. I know that I said some things that were uncalled for and just plain stupid. Honestly, what child is so entitled she can’t wait until a meeting is over?”

 

A scoff makes it past her lips, but her gaze is set on something far away, watching as a much younger version of herself shouts incoherently at a man that shouts back, spit and insults traded back and forth like a tennis match gone wrong. She completely misses the smile that has disappeared from Ruby’s face to be replaced by an expression of horror. One that has already guessed what’s coming next.

 

“Eventually I guess Father grew tired of yelling at a child and just got to the point of the argument.” Weiss watches, blankly, as a younger Weiss is thrown almost off of her feet from the force of the strike. Slamming into the wall behind her and sliding down it, clutching her face with two small, chubby hands. Her father straightens, tugging his tie back into place and then looks down at his child to hiss some words. 

 

“He said, ‘you are not to interrupt my business with meaningless chatter. You are not to cause a scene in front of anyone. You are a Schnee, and Schnees will deal with their problems without having to ask for help and inconvenience others. Is that understood?’” 

 

The little girl lets her hand drop from her face and a red hand mark is left in its absence. 

 

“‘Yes father.’”

 

“Weiss...” Ruby calls, soft and concerned, but Weiss can’t hear her. Not really, can’t hear how the word shakes uneasily in the air that has grown unnecessarily cold. All she can hear is the retreating footsteps of a man much larger than herself, black soles clicking on tile as she watches with tear-blurred eyes. Her cheek burns, and she raises her hand to trail her fingertips over the forming bruise.

 

The airship lurches to a stop, having docked in Beacon’s bay. Over the intercom, a computerized voice announces their arrival and urges all passengers to leave as this is the last stop for the night and the ship will be shutting down for inspections in a few minutes. 

 

Yet Weiss doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, doesn’t think. She just stares, blind, at the empty ship surrounding them.

 

Slowly, she becomes aware of a pressure on her right hand. It takes more effort to move her head than it should, but once she does she can see a hand, small and calloused, covering her own. Her knuckles are white, gripping the bench they’re sitting on like it’s a lifeline and without it she’s going to be swept away. The hand covering her own, however, is loose, gently resting against her knuckles.

 

Once upon a time, a much larger hand gripped the same hand with enough force to bruise.

 

“Weiss,” Ruby calls again, and as she pulls her eyes up to meet her leader’s face she can’t help but wonder when a fifteen-year-old became the more emotionally stable of the two of them. The expression that is waiting for her is concerned, and almost a perfect mirror of the one that Yang gave her. 

 

Yang has never been good at hiding her emotions, she preferred to project them loud enough and strong enough to cause others to turn away from them on their own accord; Ruby, on the other hand, hides her emotions well enough for most people to not even notice she’s doing it. It had taken Weiss a disturbingly long time to even realize she was, it was only upon realizing one night that she’d never seen the younger girl cry that it occurred to her that maybe her young leader was more mature than she let on.

 

As it is, she still never fails to impress her.

 

“He hit you, didn’t he?” There’s no accusation in her voice, but the bubble of security that had settled over them has long since left, replaced with a tight bitter heat in Weiss’s chest and a fragile sharp cold surrounding them. Ruby’s hand resting against her own tightens just the slightest at her lack of response and, after a moment of silence, she leans forward, resting her forehead against Weiss’s shoulder.

 

“It wasn’t the first time.” Weiss hates that her voice seems to run away from her when she needs to have it contained the most. Ruby’s grip tightens once more, but not enough to bruise, not even enough to redden the skin. She draws in a breath and Weiss can’t help but feel that there’s a weight in it.

 

“You told Yang?” she asks.

 

Weiss nods, Ruby releases the breath with the same weight she pulled it in.

 

“Okay.”

 

~

 

Once again, things went back to normal. Ruby didn’t mention it, Yang didn’t either, and Blake continued shooting her confused looks as the sisters went out of their way to make sure Weiss was never left alone for extended periods of time. Part of Weiss felt that all of the attention should’ve been stifling, but for some reason, she couldn’t find it within herself to tell either of the two off. Part of her knew it was because she was starved for affection, but the larger part decided to ignore that and let the lack of annoyance remain a mystery for a later time. As it was she was content to drown in affection, even if it came at the cost of some of her privacy.

 

Despite that, her study sessions with Blake seemed to remain neutral ground. Neither sister imposed on them and Yang actively encouraged them, oftentimes pointing out upcoming exams and tests in front of the two and then shooting some not-so-subtle glances her partner’s way. It didn’t take much for Weiss to figure out that Yang was trying to get the two to make up after the whole ‘White Fang Incident’ (even after three weeks the two scarcely interacted outside of group settings or their study sessions. Blake had probably said a total of three dozen words to her since and, while it did seem to be more words recently, progress was slow on that front.)

 

Hence the situation she now found herself in, sitting in the mostly empty library near curfew, surrounded by towers of books taller than she was, and inches away from a clearly confused and curious cat faunus that was looking at her as if she was the solitary piece of the puzzle she’d yet to find the correct place for. 

 

Perhaps she had been hanging out with Yang too much because more than a few bad jokes about curiosity and cats came to mind despite her resolve to not think about or mention anything cat related near the other girl, they were on thin enough ice as it was.

 

“I give up,” Blake announces, dropping both hands to the table in defeat and snapping her book shut with a click of finality. The sudden nature of the act is enough to send Weiss a few inches off of her chair, nearly chucking her book across the table in an attempt to scare off some imaginary attacker. Blake slowly raises an eyebrow at Weiss’s wide-eyed death grip on the piece of literature. She relaxes in phases, allowing each individual muscle to come undone around the book.

 

“Don’t say that. Grimm anatomy is hardly a difficult subject to find resources on,” she volunteers, hoping to cover for her small bout of insanity. Blake’s eyebrows remain risen though, and her eyes betray nothing as they fix Weiss with that deadly glare than had unsettled her so much the first time they met.

 

“I meant you,” she says, dryly. Weiss feels a bit of moisture collecting in the back of her throat.

 

“Come again?”

 

“Something’s going on. Yang and Ruby are acting weird and you’ve hardly been away from them for more than two hours at a time.” Astute as ever, Blake’s voice is as steady as her eyes. She’s waiting for a confession, and she’s not willing to give any ground before she gets it.

 

Weiss has never really known what to make of Blake if she were honest. Even before she knew of the other girl’s furry little secret they were at odds with each other just about as often as they were in league. Blake did enjoy many of the same things that Weiss did, including calm afternoons, books, and hot beverages enjoyed over light casual conversation. Yet, they also differed on many things, and the first few weeks Weiss couldn’t help but feel that the other girl had been intentionally antagonizing her. At the time she couldn’t understand why, but in retrospect, meeting someone that used to be your worst enemy and suddenly having to live with them couldn’t be an easy adjustment for anyone.

 

Eventually, they’d come to the understanding of being the only two sane ones in their dormitory and ranted to each other about their boisterous partners’ shenanigans over tea on many occasions. It had become a sort of Saturday morning ritual as they waited for Ruby to eventually rouse herself or for Yang to return from wherever she had disappeared off to at the crack of dawn.

 

Then the ‘White Fang Incident’ happened.

 

Weiss wasn’t proud of the things she’d said, or the things she’d done. She’d gotten a pretty good verbal lashing from Yang at the time and still on occasion would wake up in the middle of the night with it ringing in her head. She knew that Blake probably felt the same as Yang had also had a very long ‘talk’ with her after they’d managed to locate her, but she had meant what she’d said. In those twelve hours that Blake had gone missing, she’d had plenty of time to think over the whole issue, and she’d come to a startling conclusion: she didn’t care.

 

She didn’t care, the damn cat ears were the least of what set her off. The White Fang? Yes, she was mad! Yes, she wished that Blake had told them earlier. Yes, she felt more than a little betrayed. But, did she care that Blake, who she’d lived with for three months at that point, who she’d caught reading books that would make her Father faint, who she’d shared hairbrushes and toothpaste and shampoo with was a former member of the organization that had terrorized her family?

 

No.

 

She felt nothing on the matter.

 

She felt… numb really.

 

She understood on a logical level the impact that the White Fang had on her Father’s company and the impact it had on her childhood. She remembered vividly her father returning home from work and shouting his lungs out as a disinterested and only barely conscious version of her mother nodded along. She remembered porcelain artifacts collected from the finest of Atlesian artisans smashed against walls and tile floors. She remembered the words ‘Animals’, ‘mongrels’, and ‘filth’ thrown around like they burned the speaker’s tongue.

 

She remembered the anger that had boiled in her father’s veins as he spat, and swore, and growled.

 

Then she had looked at the girl in front of her, with two small cat ears perched on her head and pressed down into her skull, and found none of the anger her father had shown. Instead, there was a cold, empty feeling. One that she still found whenever Blake looked at her, just like she was now.

 

She still didn’t know what it meant.

 

“So what is it?”

 

Weiss swallows.

 

“Blake, I don’t-”

 

“Don’t what?” she interrupts her, eyes still unmoving, posture relaxed in a way that Weiss had seen far too often to be fooled by. It was the posture she used when she was waiting for her opponent to strike, a move meant to make the aggressor feel they were in control when they weren’t. 

 

Weiss hadn’t been in control of her own life long enough for her to even learn how to walk yet.

 

“It’s nothing to do with you if that’s your concern.” She says instead, changing tactics. With Ruby she feels safe enough to be honest, and Yang knows too much about people in general for her to dodge her for long. Blake on the other hand…

 

It’s awful hypocritical of her, isn’t it?

 

Blake’s brows lower, just the slightest. Her bow twitches and she’s sure that underneath her ears are facing backward.

 

“Don’t get sassy with me, Schnee.”

 

Once upon a time the quiet taunt of her last name probably would’ve just brought about a playful jab capped with ‘Belladonna,’ but she hasn’t called her that since the incident. No one has.

 

Weiss feels the muscles in her spine involuntarily tighten and lift her into a ramrod straight posture once again. Blake’s brows lower further.

 

“Don’t call me that.” She hisses the words out between clenched teeth, and she hates that Blake’s expression doesn’t show any of the emotions that Ruby and Yang’s did, there’s no concern or confusion, just blank curiosity, like she’s looking at a beetle trapped beneath a magnifying glass.

 

“Call you what, your last name?” There’s a note of disbelief in her voice. Weiss’s skin crawls.

 

“What’s it to you, _Belladonna?_ ” She growls the name with more venom than she ever has, than she even intended too. She watches Blake’s bowed brows slowly raise back up, her head tilting to the side as if she’s taking in new information.

 

“You’re really tightly wound about this, aren’t you?”

 

Weiss hates that this, of all things, is the longest conversation they’ve had in three weeks.

 

“Blake,” she says the word softly, gently, with more pleading than she has used since she was five and not afraid to ask for things, “Please. Just… not right now… okay?”

 

Blake’s guard drops, just for a moment, not even long enough for her to blink, but she does see just a flicker of that same concern Yang and Ruby showed her, but then it’s gone and replaced with a full-on glare.

 

“No. You don’t get to demand that I be more honest with you about things and then turn around in the same breath and leave me in the dark. Trust is a two-way street, Princess, and you can’t just expect me to-”

 

“Blake!” Weiss shouts.

 

It’s the first time she’s raised her voice at the girl since their fight.

 

Around them, the already quiet library falls even more silent. No one speaks, no one moves, no one breathes. Weiss can feel her heart beginning to pound between her temples. She draws in a quick gasp of breath and nearly swallows her own tongue.

 

“It’s not about... I’m not asking you to... I can’t really...” the words get softer with each attempt. They come out of her mouth in a jumbled mess of consonants and vowels until Weiss can’t find the emotional energy to finish and instead stares at her useless pale hands as they flounder for something to do that’ll somehow save her from this garbage fire of a conversation.

 

This is just what she feared from her interactions with Blake, that one or both of them would get too caught up in the literal miles of ruin and destruction that had lead them to be here, and in the process break that thin ice they’d been standing on for the past four months. Now she’s fallen in the water and the cold has stolen the breath from her lungs and the sense from her brain. She doesn’t know which way is up and which is down, so she swims on, desperate for something to say, something to do that will fix what she broke.

 

What was broken long before the two of them even met.

 

The fight in Blake’s shoulders slowly sinks away, and there’s the concern that Ruby and Yang had both harbored. Weiss is simultaneously relieved and distraught to see it again.

 

“Weiss…” her first name sounds a lot softer in Blake’s mouth. Perhaps because it’s such a juxtaposition to her last. “what happened?”

 

Weiss feels all of the breath in her lungs stop, nearly choking her. That pleading tone haunts her dreams, it’s the same one she gave her when they finally found her after their fight.

 

“I… I’ve been having… episodes…”

 

Blake frowns.

 

“What do you mean by that?”

 

Weiss tries to take in another breath but it gets lodged in her throat.

 

“Panic attacks…” she hates how small her voice sounds. “Nightmares… reactions to certain…” she thinks about how she’d nearly chucked her book across the room at the mention of her last name, “phrases…”

 

Blake’s frown deepens, if possible, drawing her brows into the motion.

 

“How long…?”

 

Weiss shrugs, “Since I moved to Beacon.”

 

Blake doesn’t respond immediately, instead, her gaze lowers for just a moment, fixing on the piles of books and papers between them as if they’ll yield something for her to say. Her fingers tap against the table and Weiss isn’t quite sure why the sound is so reassuring.

 

“So… when you lived… in Atlas…” she trails off and Weiss doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.

 

“It was… quiet.” She decides on, “a lot quieter than here in Beacon, I suppose that probably has something to do with it.”

 

Blake’s gaze pops back up, but there’s a question in it now.

 

“You’ve never had a problem with loud sounds before. Or at least if you have you haven’t mentioned it.”

 

Weiss strangles down the sudden inappropriate urge to laugh.

 

“No. I haven’t.” She agrees, “but I’ve found that I don’t do so well in silence anymore.”

 

Blake doesn’t seem to know how to take that. If Weiss is honest she doesn’t either.

 

“In Atlas… Father was always busy and rarely home, Mother was… unavailable for conversation most of the time, Winter left to join the military when I turned thirteen, and Whitley…” she paused, thinking of the little boy that used to be her only playmate and then thought of the sniveling boy she’d left behind, following at her father’s coattails. “Changed a lot once he hit puberty.”

 

Blake snorts slightly. Weiss shoots her an unamused glare.

 

“My point is that I was left alone, a lot, in the mansion.” in her peripheral vision she can see Blake wincing at the word, she decides not to acknowledge it. “And I could sometimes go for weeks without seeing another person in more than passing. When I got to Beacon it was like suddenly all of my life to that point was just a bad dream. There were people everywhere, all the time, and I didn’t really know how to deal with it at first. So I may have come across as a bit-”

 

“Snooty?” Blake volunteers and Weiss can’t stop herself from glaring at her once again. The grin on her face is good-natured though. It’s been a while since she’s seen it.

 

“That.”

 

Blake snorts.

 

“Once I got used to it though, when I did find myself alone or in silence I…,” she thinks back to the afternoon in the dormitory, the night when she woke up alone. Her chest tightens just the slightest. “I started to wonder if maybe this part was the dream.”

 

Any sign of mirth in Blake’s face melts away to be replaced with that concerned furrow of her brow. Weiss forces herself to swallow the tightness. “It was small at first, I barely noticed it until… you remember that night when I ended up… when Ruby ended up in my bed?”

 

“You refused to let go,” Blake recalls and Weiss can’t quite stop the rush of heat to her face before it becomes noticeable.

 

“Yes. Well, that night I woke up and you and Yang were gone. Yang snores quite loudly and you aren’t exactly the most silent sleeper either and without both of you the dorm was just…” Silent. Deathly, unearthly silent. Like someone sucked all of the air out and she was left sitting in a vacuum where no one could hear her scream. “I couldn’t hear anything besides my breathing and whatever feeling I’d been having before, the mild discomfort with quiet rooms, or whatever, hit me like a freight train.”

 

Blake hums, thoughtful.

 

“So you’ve been having panic attacks in response to silence because it reminds you of your childhood home?” She sums up and Weiss shrugs.

 

“Basically.”

 

“That explains why Yang and Ruby have been basically giving you no privacy…” she frowns further, “but doesn’t explain why Yang’s been making such an effort to control her temper around you.”

 

Weiss winces, she’d been hoping that Blake wouldn’t comment on that part. “That’s… a different story-”

 

“I don’t think that it is.” Blake cuts her off, her eyes are glinting again. She knows that she’s found the root of the problem and she’s not afraid to expose it. Ruby had been so gentle on it, Yang had just stumbled across it accidentally, but Blake…

 

Blake has never been the most gentle when it came to handling her moods. Most of the time it was a good thing, it balanced her out. Right now though? Right now Weiss needs gentle.

 

“Please don’t turn this into an argument.” It comes out softer than she intended, and from the stricken expression on Blake’s face, it is not what she was expecting to hear. She presses on despite it. “If you want to know, just ask. You don’t have to interrogate me, Blake. I’m not your enemy.”

 

Blake’s bow quivers and Weiss can imagine the ears pinning down against her head just like they did when they met again on the docks.

 

“I…” Blake’s voice cracks and Weiss doesn’t miss the color threatening to fill her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I got carried away-”

 

“Yeah, well, happens to the best of us.” She tries to flash a reassuring smile, but she feels that the muscles in her cheeks didn’t pull far enough.

 

Blake at least takes it for the attempt, her lips twitch just slightly in a mirror of the action.

 

“We’ve both been kinda… awkward after the whole… thing, huh?”

 

Weiss can’t stop the laugh this time, it breaks through her throat unbidden.

 

“Understatement.”

 

Blake’s tentative smile grows, just the slightest. “I really am sorry, Weiss.” The smile melts just as quickly as it comes, “But you have to understand-”

 

“I don’t blame you for your actions.” She cuts her off, she doesn’t need another lecture on why the White Fang is a group of misguided faunus. It’s a pointless argument and Weiss doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to see them that way, no matter how much she might change. “I understand that my Family’s company has caused a lot of damage and has a lot of blood on its hands. Sometimes drastic actions are necessary… even if they did cause me a lot of grief during my childhood.”

 

Blake’s expression hardens. “Then why didn’t you say that the first time?”

 

Weiss resists the urge to wince.

 

“I… It was too raw…”

 

“Too raw?” Now Blake just looks confused and Weiss wants to facepalm.

 

“When I was young the White Fang attacked and stole an entire shipment of dust. Not a little, not even a regular shipment. They stole three entire airships full of it.” Blake’s expression doesn’t change, but Weiss can feel a shaky feeling beginning to invade her chest. “My father came home furious. He shouted down the hallways, stomped violently enough to throw picture frames off the wall, and chucked pieces of Atlesian art that I would’ve been-” her throat cuts out for a moment and she forces her hands to clench into fists to prevent them starting to shake. “Punished severely for even looking at. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last, but that time… was one of the rare occasions my mother was… mostly cognizant.”

*

The memory caused the hair on her arms to stand at attention. She’d been only seven at the time, but she still remembered it clear as a bell. The ringing, violent crashes as her father flung pieces of furniture and cutlery at different walls, screaming words that she would’ve been hit for repeating.

 

Her mother stood on the edge of the room, watching disinterested as the hurricane unfolded, her hands wrapped loosely around a single wine glass. 

 

“I’ll kill them! I’ll tear their damn pelts from their bodies!” Father flung a particularly large vase at the wall beside her mother and one of the glass pieces lodged itself in the skin beside her mother’s eye.

 

The woman hardly blinked.

 

“Jacques.” 

 

He stopped, for a moment. Heaving with breath and covered head to toe in the remains of what has once been their parlor. A particularly stubborn piece of cotton from what had once been a pillow clung to his mustache.

 

**“What.”**

 

The amount of venom in the word forced Weiss deeper into the shadows outside the door. It was late, she was supposed to be in bed, but the noise was just too loud for her to ignore.

 

Her mother stepped carefully and gracefully over the shattered remains on the floor, seemingly floating above it all. She’d always admired that grace, though she hadn’t seen it in years.

 

“You’re making a scene. If you want to get the damn beasts so bad, then just do it yourself. You pathetic-”

 

The backhand that her father landed on her mother was barely over before he grabbed the woman by the throat and lifted her clear off the ground. Mother didn’t struggle, didn’t even blink, just hung limply in her father’s grip and stared blankly into his iron gaze.

 

"Wenn du noch einmal so mir sprichst, dann-"

 

"Dann was?” she rasped, “Tötest du mich? Nur zu. Hör auf mit den leeren Drohungen, Jacques. Zeig mir wozu ein richtiger Man fähig ist."

 

Her father’s shoulders trembled with fury.

 

"Schlampe." 

 

He flung her mother to the floor, but again the woman hardly flinched. Instead, she simply stood, brushed some of the blood from her face and faced her father on equal footing.

 

"Feigling."

 

Her father scooped up the nearest blunt object and swung, but her mother caught the urn and with more speed and strength than she knew the woman possessed, she flung the man against the nearest wall.

 

They stood like that for a moment, her father pressed against the plaster and her mother glaring at him with the eyes of a snow leopard. Father didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t even meet her gaze. Finally, the woman sneered and turned on her heel, leaving the room without another word.

*

“My parents fought, it was common, but that was the only time it ever got physical.” Weiss’s fists aren’t enough to prevent the trembling from wracking her body. “It was the only time that my father threatened to kill… I…”

 

Weiss’s gaze had settled on the table at some point and now she can’t bring herself to move it to face whatever expression Blake is giving her.

 

“I honestly think that my mother wouldn’t have stopped him if he’d tried.”

 

The silence that follows is both needed and makes Weiss’s stomach roll. Blake draws in a breath, slow and deep like she’s gearing up for a fight.

 

“Weiss… has your father ever-”

 

“If you finish that question with ‘hit you’ I’m going to flip this table.”

 

The silence returns and Weiss presses her nails into the fleshy parts of her palm, hoping it’ll somehow distract her.

 

Then Blake releases her breath.

 

“When I was in the Fang I had a partner.” Weiss’s gaze snaps back up to Blake’s face, startled by the sudden break of the silence. Blake’s not looking at her with the same horror that both Yang and Ruby had given her, instead, there’s a glint of recognition. “He was… older than me and I looked up to him a great deal. In the beginning, and even now in some twisted way, I had no doubt that he loved me, but… well, the Fang is an organization that prides itself on efficiency and it’s gotten… more violent over the years. I didn’t agree with the message and voiced it to A… my partner frequently. He didn’t see the issue and sometimes we would get into arguments over it… a few times the arguments got… violent.”

 

Weiss remembers her mother held aloft as her father shouted death threats in her face.

 

“I justified it, at first. I thought that because of the circumstances we were in, small camps and raids where there was no concept of distancing ourselves from each other when we got upset, that the only thing we could resort to was violence. It was unavoidable. Then, later, I said it was my fault. I was the one that instigated the arguments, I was the one who couldn’t keep her mouth shut about his actions. If I just learned to be quiet he wouldn’t have to…”

 

She sucks in another breath.

 

“Eventually I realized there was no excuse… or maybe I just ran out of them… I’m not sure. The point is that no one who loves you should hurt you, not on purpose and never ‘for your own good…’ it took me disturbingly long to figure that out.”

 

Something that Weiss had buried long ago, some sharp thing that she’d gotten so used to that she forgot it was there, dislodges from the inside of her ribcage. 

 

“Blake I-”

 

“That includes family, Weiss.”

 

For the first time, Weiss feels that she and Blake can actually get along. That maybe they aren’t destined to be half-friends, or just tolerate each other for the sake of their other friends. Maybe they understand each other more than they think. Maybe the past isn’t a wall that’s been thrust between them, but a river they just have to figure out how to cross.

 

And Blake’s just laid down the first branch for a bridge.

 

“Thank you.”

 

Blakes nods and chances a smile. It’s a little weak, a little nervous, but it’s genuine.

 

It’s a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Might do an epilogue, but for now, I'll leave it here. If you want more you can check out my other Weiss fic, and if Prismatic Ponytails isn't your jam...
> 
> uh... after defeating Salem Weiss opens her own dust empire and as one of the most famous huntresses in the four kingdoms, backed by six of the other most famous huntsmen and huntresses in the four kingdoms, she crushes her father underfoot and lives a happy life with her wife (of your choice) and many children that have no doubt they are loved. The end.
> 
> Have a fantastic day!  
> -M


End file.
